Episode 709 | The 7 Greatest Investments of My Life

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Entrepreneurship, Management, Business, Marketing

4.9 • 819 Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2024

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In episode 709, join Rob Walling for a solo adventure as he shares his story of growing his personal wealth over the past few decades. Selling companies was the major driver of wealth, but he also explores the role of cryptocurrency, running profitable companies, and angel investing. Rob emphasizes the power of entrepreneurship in achieving financial freedom, while acknowledging there are ways to do so while keeping risk relatively low. Episode Sponsor: We have been partnering with Lemon.io for several years, and they’ve proven to be a great choice when it comes to hiring for a highly skilled developer to work on your project. Here are five reasons why you should consider working with Lemon.io. The time from your request to getting a candidate is just 48 hours. Developers have previously worked with tech giants such as Apple, Google, Netflix, Airbnb, Intel, and LEGO. They only provide senior devs, with an average of 7 years' experience. Their talent pool covers more than 300 dev languages & frameworks. Your hire comes with a zero-risk, replacement guarantee. Customers of Lemon.io typically stick around for at least a year, proving they know how to gain your trust by delivering consistent results. Quit wasting time searching for a solid developer at a great price. Get in touch with Lemon.io. As a bonus for our podcast listeners, you’ll get a 15% discount on your first four weeks of working with a developer at lemon.io/startups. That’s lemon.io/startups Topics we cover: 2:50 – A lesson on how to build wealth 4:31 – Entrepreneurship was our biggest tool 6:37 – Building, acquiring, then selling companies 10:45 – Building slowly while staying risk-averse 13:27 – Investing in riskier assets like cryptocurrency 19:39 – Running profitable companies 20:56 – Angel investing, and WP Engine 23:44 – Traditional, salaried employment 24:53 – Typical investments: stocks, bonds, REITs 27:36 – Real estate investing Links from the Show: MicroConf Connect Christopher Gimmer (@cgimmer) | X Christopher’s tweet Sherry Walling (@sherrywalling) | X The Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping Start Small Stay Small by Rob Walling This Took 11 Years to Be An "Overnight Success" - SaaS Exit Strategy Zen Founder The SaaS Playbook by Rob Walling WP Engine TinySeed Barbell Strategy Explained for Stock and Bond Investors If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you! Subscr...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to another episode of Startup to the Rest of Us.
0:02.9	I'm your host Rob Walling, and every week on this show, I talk about building an incredible life through startups.
0:09.7	Usually it's bootstrapping and mostly bootstrapping.
0:12.3	Sometime I have venture-funded startups come on and talk about their experience,
0:16.3	but realistically, it's all about founders, humans, that are trying to make a difference in their
0:21.7	lives and the lives of the folks around them. Entrepreneurship has been the number one
0:27.6	force in my life that has changed it for the better. It brought me from making $4.50 an hour
0:34.5	at my first job and $17 an hour at my first job out of college to where I am today,
0:41.0	in a position where finances are no longer a major concern in my life. And that feels like a very
0:47.9	weird thing to say based on where I came from. So in today's episode, I'm going to talk about building wealth. And specifically,
0:56.2	I'm going to talk a bit about my story, the story of Sherry and I building wealth over the past
1:02.2	20-something years. And I'm going to talk about the activities we've done in order that have brought
1:08.6	us the most wealth in our lives. And I realize that talking about money
1:13.8	can be a taboo subject. I've never been someone to share my MRR and, you know, act like I'm building
1:20.0	in public when in fact I'm actually bragging in public. But I do think that many of us who are out to find freedom, purpose, and relationships,
1:30.5	we need to find a way to make enough money to quit the day job or to augment our day job
1:35.5	or at a certain point to make enough money that we never have to work again.
1:39.4	Because as much as most of us will say, I don't actually care about the money, I care about the freedom.
1:44.5	The money is the means to that end. The money is the means to get to freedom. Before we dive
1:50.6	into that, you should check out microconf connect at microconf connect.com. This is our online community
1:56.5	and forum. We host it in Slack and we're approaching 7,000 members. They're bootstrapped
2:02.9	and mostly bootstrapped SaaS founders. Recent conversations in Connect, including a debate about
	...

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