Preparing Your Global Business Financials for The New Year with Shlomo Freund

Our guest for the last podcast this year is a good friend of mine – Shlomo freund. We used co-host China Business Cast back in the days. He has found his passion in helping people with their financials. This is a perfect time to think about the new year since we are nearing the end of the year. Let’s tune in.

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[00:00:00] Episode 339 of Global from Asia talking about free financial self. Show globalfromasia.com/freefinancialself. Let’s tune in. Welcome to the Global from Asia podcast, where the daunting process of running an international business is broken down, into straight up actionable advice. And now your host, Michael Michelini. Can I, is it PC to say Christmas? I’m in China.

[00:00:30] There is no Christmas here. It’s like the Grinch stole Christmas succeeded in the, in the kids movie when I was a little kid. But, I dunno. I, I think maybe in the bigger cities of China, they might be more Christmasy. But I, it’s, I’m recording this on December 24th, Christmas Eve, 7:00 PM. It’s dark, no Santa in sight.

[00:00:51] My kids are asking where’s Santa Claus. Where are the gifts? Where’s the Christmas tree? I said, Santa is banned in China. This is, they’re like, well, I’m like, they banned them, man. They banned them. And, you know, hopefully the show doesn’t get banned. Anyways, so today is the last show of the, let me make sure, I think, yeah, the last show of 2020.

[00:01:17] And what a year? I think, everybody’s got to say what a year, you know, it’s, I don’t, I’m not, you know, it’s, it’s like, I’m just. Hope this year was over already, but, we made it. We’re alive. We got to appreciate everyday that we’re alive. We’ve got to appreciate our health, our loved ones, our family. There has been a lot of death, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of, a lot of trauma this year. You know, I talked to Brandon and our community.

[00:01:50] We had a little catch-up call and he was, we’re recapping a year or it’s like a volcano. And the, hit the volcano when I got to Manila; coronavirus. What else was there? Checking my notes? Riots, police riots, you know, riots, fires in California, elections. I mean, geez, what a year? We are not going to forget this year.

[00:02:16] So I thought we would end this year, and a higher, it’d be a planner, you know. Shlomo, he’s my good, good friend. We used to be co-hosts together in China Business Cast. John’s picked that show up and he has Simon and some other amazing hosts there. We were on episode 100 lately. So definitely check out China business cast if you’re interested in that.

[00:02:35] But, we’re not doing that anymore. We are on our own, I’m still here at GFA doing our thing, but Shlomo has found his passion in helping people with their financials. I don’t know about you, but it’s, I’m not, that’s my weaker point. You know, I’m an artist, I don’t, I’m not good at, with the Excel, but it is.

[00:02:59] And we brought him on the show. It’s the end of the year, you know, this is a great time for you to think about the new year. Start with clean slate. And, I’m going to have a Snickers, but while I have the Snickers, let’s tune into the show. Shlomo, globalfromasia.com/free financial self and at the end of the show, we’ll share a little bit more about some of the years, next year’s plans for the community.

[00:03:25] How about that? So we’re going back on Amazon. We’re starting our e-commerce business. I’m partnering with a factory, not going to be as transparent, but I will be transparent about the bank I use and it helped me get the seller central account, mercury.com. I applied online. Didn’t need to go to the US, didn’t need to apply.

[00:03:43] We got the tax ID, the statement online submitted to Amazon seller central and were approved. So. It works and it gets virtual debit cards, physical debit cards, online interface, basically almost no fees, no application fees. Of course there’s a few fees, but banks, you know, compared to most other banks, it’s so super affordable.

[00:04:03] They are supporting the show too. So if you do use our link globalfromasia.com/mercury, you get some cash and we might get some cash and it’s a win-win. So I hope you enjoy the show. And if you want, if you need some kind of US bank or banking solution, I’m always. And with these solutions, it’s hard to call them banks, but it’s been amazing so far, you know, and they are supporting the community.

[00:04:25] Check them out globalfromasia.com/mercury for a special bonus. Thank you. So, thank you. Thank you so much Shlomo, it’s a pleasure to have you on, we’ve, we were co-hosts together in China Business Cast. They said three and a half years. Wow. Time flies. And, and with many years before that in the startup startup community and Beijing and China and blogging and content, creating a community.

[00:04:50] So you’re, you’re currently in Israel, right? I’m currently in Israel indeed, yes. And, working on free financial self, which is, I know it’s been a big passion for you even, even when I first knew you, you know, helping, even with our podcasts, our, our, our projects, we did, you were always the one that kind of helped keep the organization of the finances and the strategy.

[00:05:17] And that’s what you’re doing, doing now, so it’s really great. Do you, do you mind adding to that or putting in a little bit more of what you’re up to, Shlomo? Thanks again for coming on the show. Sure. It’s, it’s actually amazing being here and again, you know, kind of co-hosting with you. So thank you very much for inviting.

[00:05:37] I really, so a bit about what you said of what I do. So indeed, personal finance, investment and travel has been a passion of mine since I was a very small child and Free Financial Self brings in all those things. What I want to do is help people who work remotely to organize their money so they can reach financial freedom faster.

[00:06:07] That’s basically the idea. I’ve been, I’ve been, let’s say investing and working on my finances as an adult for the past 15 or 16 years. Be learning and failing like everybody else. But that, what was important for me is not money for the sake of making money which sounds a bit odd. I, I I’m sure, but more of aligning that with the perfect lifestyle that I want for myself and my family.

[00:06:43] And I’m happy to say that nowadays we do live that lifestyle. We work on, we go on vacations every year or even twice a year, sometimes for a few months. So we’re location independent. We homeschool our daughter, so everything is very flexible and this is what fits us. And, basically, this is what I’m, I’m teaching others to do, others to do the same through their finances.

[00:07:07] Great. Yeah, it’s very important, totally important. And, and it’s year-end. So it’s even more important. I think, you know, we’re at the end of 2020, I think a lot of us are happy to have an end of this year. It’s been a very different year, probably for most of us and we should plan, right. Planning is important.

[00:07:29] You know, I think everybody does this at the end of the year, you know, thinking about new year projects, businesses they’re personal and finance, right? So it’s very important thing to do and perfect timing for you to come on and share with us. It’s the highlight of the year, thinking about your new year’s resolutions and finances.

[00:07:51] So you’re closing one year and opening another one. And hopefully for everybody a much better one than it used to be, although maybe, you know, maybe an online space I might be, I might be wrong. And people who are listening now saying, I I killed it on, on 2020, because everybody stayed home and bought stuff.

[00:08:10] So I don’t know. But generally speaking to the rest of the world, it’s been hard. There have been some that people don’t, you know, I think lots of people don’t like to show off, but I have heard from others and seen an Amazon, you know, and selling online. Of course you have to be in the right category. But if you’re selling in the right category right now, online, you know, you’re, you’re probably having one of your.

[00:08:31] Better years ever, for sure. So, so yeah, hopefully we can keep it. I know we’ve been preparing for it to show for a while and talking back and forth. I think, you know, the, the listeners, the people who’ve come to our events and, you know, you’ve been in the community, so they’re a little bit more on a product business side or the trading side.

[00:08:49] So maybe we can keep that in mind, but I think just as general help for any entrepreneur or business-owner, you know, in the, in the, in the space. So You know, what would you, you know, maybe we can give them some tactics, some ideas, start with, what do we open up a new Excel spreadsheet? Of course there’s softwares.

[00:09:09] I, I mean, what should somebody be doing now? It’s, you know, coming to the end of the year. Sure. So, so I’ll give, I have a giveaway at the end and then before to help with that too. But we’ll, we’ll mention that later, that can help with the things that you mentioned. However, let’s maybe talk about things that are, you know, the common issues that people have when dealing with their finances and what I see from people, my clients, my audience is that they’re putting their

[00:09:43] all their eggs in one basket and specifically for business owners and entrepreneurs, their businesses are so, so important for them. And I totally get that as a, as a business owner myself, however, You need to treat your business as another investment. There is a return that you expect to get from that investment, and that’s suppose to support the life that you want for yourself.

[00:10:08] So I encourage people to look at the, a broader, a broader way of their life and their business. You have one investment, very important one, which is your business, but you have your life and your, let’s say your personal money should also be invested and work for you at the same, at the same time.

[00:10:33] And the bottom line is I don’t think that all your money and investments should go only in the business. I think it’s too risky. Of course there are exceptions and you need to look to every, every, case by case, but basically think of it in a, in a broader way of, of your business. Does that make sense?

[00:10:57] Yeah, I mean, it makes sense, separating business and personal, like I think one tactic, or it sounds obvious, but I think you probably would say pay yourself first or budget your, your living, you know, your salary, your payment pay. I think that’s probably what you, you know, you would say, right. That’s probably the first step is take, how much are you going to make out of this business?

[00:11:18] Was that maybe a good step? It’s definitely a good step to separate. I, so when you asked that, I didn’t think about the actual technicalities. It goes without saying, you know, you should separate that and understand how much you get from your business. What’s the return that you got from that.

[00:11:38] And how does that support, how does that support what you do? So when you separate this, you are able to, it’s much easier to do that. I do every month, calculating monthly, calculating my net worth to see where I’m heading with my finances in life. So I can start seeing now doing it for three, four years now.

[00:12:03] I spot trends of seeing what’s working, what’s not working. So that business is building up your net worth or not building up your net worth, which is not good of course. But when you’re doing it month by month by month, you get that trend and see, am I, am I doing these things right? Or do I need to change things for the, for the future and starting in the new year’s of course, wonderful time to do that.

[00:12:31] You, you can sum up your whole year and see what happened, why you chose what you should change. So I think the next question probably is how many months should you budget, I guess depends on your risk tolerance, but probably at least have a half a year of costs to be covered. I think it’s Bill Gates that says he likes to keep a year and a half of salaries.

[00:12:56] Yeah, opinions, opinions vary between three months to a year. I didn’t know about what you said about the 18 months, but, that, that makes sense. So it’s really the, the risk, uh, the risk tolerance there. But, you know, it’s also a matter of understanding how much you’re flexible with your expenses and where you live.

[00:13:20] Let’s say that you’re now living in an expensive country and you can hop onto a, you, say many people who are in Asia. So this already might be happening. They, they live in, on a lower budget and that works for them. And maybe they can optimize their expenses even more, or, or I dunno if they hold a, an apartment somewhere, you know, somehow remotely, Airbnb or something like that.

[00:13:44] So you can always play with these things to, to, improve the stability of your, of your life. Basically, if you’re over your finances. Yeah, that sounds good. So some, hopefully, so I guess a couple of action points just to keep, you know, tactics, it sounds obvious, but I’ll, I’ll be honest, I but you, I know I talked to some people, we don’t do this, but you know, how much do you need per month personally?

[00:14:16] You know, if you’re gonna pay yourself into business, put that on a budget. And then how much do you pay to keep your business operating? You know, like what’s, I think it’s a slang word is, what’s your nut? I learned that from some like New York business moving, maybe, but what’s your monthly cost?

[00:14:37] Exactly. Yeah. But do people know how, how much return they get on their e-commerce business? Is this a common thing? I think people look at some, there’s some softwares that are pull in your data from Amazon. And then it gives you an idea of your, um, I think one common number is return on advertising ROAS advertising spend realize OAS and, sort of, you know, how much you’re spending on ads and how much you’re.

[00:15:10] Selling, you know, so cost of return on advertising. But a lot of times we just do these back of the back of the envelopes where we are, we spend about this much, and we had this most in our bank account now, you know, I think that’s, I I’ll speak for others. A lot of people are that way. I understand. Yeah.

[00:15:32] So again, going back to see it as an investment, see how much you can get. Back from it, 10%, 20% a year, 40% a year, 200% a year. I don’t know what the numbers are. I don’t have an e-commerce business, but this is another way, another way to look at it. At the end of the day, what we all want and what I teach is being able to control your numbers.

[00:15:57] And then, and then, you know, take your money to the next level. Okay. Yep. What would you say is some targets or what, what do you think somebody should look at? I mean, there’s a target, targets. Let’s think about it. So, I think that people should, as I mentioned, should go and understand what their net worth is and through this, monthly or.

[00:16:26] The minimum every three months to figure out what the trend is. Okay. How much you are worth. That’s really, really important. Then, going for, you know, thinking long-term about your plans. Yes. You have your business now. This is what you do, but does that support what you, the lifestyle that you want for yourself on the longer term?

[00:16:53] Okay. So do you want to retire in Thailand? Do you want to go to Manhattan? This is something and that will obviously influence your business. Okay. You might not making enough or you’re making more than enough and that’s okay. So we need to balance these. I think these things are very, very important and, and can really make it very clear also for your business of where you want and need it to be.

[00:17:23] Does that make sense? Yeah, that’s that’s helpful. And then, and it’s funny, I wrote my note for the show when the, you mentioned separating the finances. And I wrote on the notes, for the next tactic. So you know, where your personal and business money’s going, controlling your numbers. So this is exactly what you’re saying, categorizing it, understand what are the needs and what.

[00:17:52] Once personally, and in terms of the business, what’s really essential. So this is the needs and what is kind of, you know, nice to have. All right. And then privately, like what’s typically a year plan, you know, what do you usually suggest for a forecast planning? So with the businesses, with the business, it’s more of a shirt.

[00:18:19] Term planning. So maybe it will be a one to two years, especially with the e-commerce, but with life planning, I would say very, very long-term as much as possible because that will make a difference on a huge difference on your finances. The more you anticipate. You basically save and make much more money, uh, on the longer term because of the compounding effect.

[00:18:46] So the more time you have the better. So if you plan for three, four years ahead, um, then you can make only some kind of investments. Which is a shame, but if you’d say I have a goal 10, 15 years now, even more, you can take advantage of so many other options that make me make you so much more money. So in my opinion, this is, this is really essential.

[00:19:11] All right. We’ll get to investments later, I think is, but I would like to talk about what kind of investments you mean are common or are typical? Sure. But let’s maybe stick on the planning stage for now. So we’re like, yeah. Separate personal business, calculate your net worth figuring out your monthly costs and make.

[00:19:35] So for me to decide one or two years like personal, as long as possible, and. This will probably be on a monthly basis like you know, everybody likes to know software. Everybody likes to know software. There’s Xero, there’s QuickBooks. I mean, of course there’s Google sheets. Especially for Amazon, I actually use Google sheets.

[00:19:57] I do Google sheets. It works the best, you know, that’s the reason. And that might be a problem for people here too. Is that a lot of my, so have accounts in many places. So if you’re a US-based yes, it’s very easy. You can automate, I think almost everything, but if you’re not, so if you have accounts in several countries, several currencies, that makes things a lot, lot harder.

[00:20:23] And I’ve been looking for a few years now for a tool that makes that and. Here. And there, there are tools that claim to do it, but, uh, of course they can support or they don’t support. They say that, you know, they say they support, we support the 30,000 financial institution. Great. But my financial institution is not there.

[00:20:44] And then I need to find a solution right there. So if you have the more common one, great. If you have the less common one or you’re from a. Let’s say a smaller country like me from Israel, then the solution might not be out there and you need to do everything manually. So Google spreadsheet is my best friend for now.

[00:21:04] Nice. Okay. And, I don’t want to put, you know, and there’s probably templates or formulas and systems in there. Maybe you work with your clients on it, or, you know, I don’t know what you’re willing to share on that, but, but yeah, you could probably have multiple tabs. Oh, you really? Okay. So, Part of the roadmap that I work with clients and, and teach people.

[00:21:31] One step out of that is called control your numbers. And on that step it’s I teach people how to, again, calculate their net worth. A few ways to do it. So some people, uh, prefer to do it on another way than another then like in, in one way than another. But basically I teach them this. Then I teach them how to calculate.

[00:21:56] Their cashflow and categorize their expenses. And then seeing in there, what are I just spoke about the needs and wants? What are the things that you really need? What are the things that you want and then maybe eliminate them. You can do the same thing for your business, the net worth, just for your business.

[00:22:11] It’s the net worth of your business. It’s a cashflow your business, what are the needs and wants? And you basically can create a, let’s say a plan. Just for your business. I encourage people to do it also for their life and kind of have this mini plan for the business inside their life plan, if that makes sense, but you can also do adjust for your, for your business.

[00:22:32] I’ll share at the end, I have a spreadsheet, a Google tool that I made to calculate how much your net worth it’s really easy to use. And, I’m happy to share this with the audience. Wow. That’d be amazing. Thanks. Thanks so much, so well, all right. Let’s, let’s keep moving. So then Google sheets, which is awesome.

[00:22:51] Cause it’s, you know, obviously that’s free too, but I mean, I know Amazon sellers are e-commerce sellers. It’s a little bit harder because we have the high-frequency small amount B to C sales. So maybe we could use both. I mean, there’s also maybe your personal spreadsheet and then of course your business spreadsheet, there’s more, there’s the more detailed.

[00:23:10] Sheet, maybe, you know, is round numbers here for the forecasting. I mean, there’s probably different spreadsheets. There’s more, there’s actual and forecast, but we’re, we’re talking to them about making a forecast. Right. So we’re looking maybe at the past numbers making a round, you know, zero, you know, there’s this zeros here, right.

[00:23:25] We’re not like getting an exact yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you can, you can do that. The thing is this, the main thing that you want to learn is what’s the return on your investment of you said the return on advertising, but basically what’s the return of your business. And then you can keep, you know, compound to get them recalculating it and make a forecast.

[00:23:51] Assuming things are as good or even better. Then as the user then than it is as it used to be. But until you don’t know that number, it’s really hard to make a forecast. So you need to have some kind of data. If you’re just starting out, you have to, you have to guesstimate, but it’s not as accurate. Of course.

[00:24:15] Yup. I’ll share us. We should look at our trailing data. Right. So try to get some averages from our previous year to year, and then extrapolate that into the future. Exactly exactly. And you can expect extrapolate it with a once. You know, the return. You can basically do that and then you can decide, okay, I putting this money back into the business, or I am diversifying and putting it in other investments or taking it home and then invest it as a, as a personal.

[00:24:46] Investment. It really depends. This is what I spoke at the beginning of, you know, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I think there should be a few baskets because um, business works. It grows, but it can also things change and you want to mitigate those risks. Which goes to the next point. Right? I mean, I also just put it up, finally make a new video blog blog.

[00:25:11] And, I called it like my own personal plans for 2021, but I, I talk about Mike, the Mike Tyson quote we’ve, we’ve heard that in startup world. Right? Like everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. Right? Like, I mean, definitely 2020 was a Mike. I got knocked. Mike Tyson punched me in the face, you know, like I had plans.

[00:25:33] Those, obviously with a special, very special circumstances year, but we do need to make plans, but then, um, you know, how can we, how do we really predict the future? You know, I guess we have forecasts, we take percentages, we think is going to increase over time. So we, we put a higher increase in our sales.

[00:25:57] Like what would you suggest as some strategies for forecasting? I’ll I’ll give you an example of what happened to us. I think, I think, I think it represents it the best. So we diversify over a few types of investments. We don’t have the, the eggs in one basket and when COVID-19 hit around, mid-March market started, going down and down and down, down, down, and you see.

[00:26:32] You know, the money finishing like, okay. Was I worried to be completely frank? No, I was not worried. And the reason is because I know how the markets are doing long-term. I can’t say it was fun. Seeing the numbers going down. Okay. Let’s let’s separate those two things by it. Wasn’t that I’m selling like crazy and like going, I don’t know what to do.

[00:26:58] I can’t sleep at night. The most important thing is that you want to sleep good at night. Now I know of other people that told me I can see those numbers going down. They sold their portfolio. And, you know, three weeks later, everything started going up and weird. Basically back up and even better than that.

[00:27:19] Okay. So to some extent you need to trust the, it’s funny to say this, to trust the market and, you know, trust the statistics and things that happened. We’ll keep going. It doesn’t guarantee that this is what will happen, but there’s some likeliness, even a high likeliness that this is. This will happen.

[00:27:46] So, how do you mitigate this? You still need to look at long-term. You have to look at long-term and trust us because if not, it’s really, really hard. It’s really, really hard. And going back to putting the money in the business and then you get a punch in the face. I agree if this is the only thing where your money is and sales went to zero.

[00:28:12] Yes, you’re in trouble. You should have. Got ready in advance for situations like this, with other investments with, with, other, emergency funds. Maybe part-time regular job. Maybe you have a spouse and she’s working something. Okay. Going all in is good. When it’s working. It’s a disaster when it’s not.

[00:28:40] Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, risk, risk reward and, diversification, but also like, I think what I’m thinking about summarizing is investing. You have to think long-term and there’s going to be the downs and there’s going to be the ups. But yeah, I mean, I still remember the March. I still, I was, it was, I did feel like the world was ending in March and at least for me mid-March, I mean, personally and business was, was insane.

[00:29:10] Like Amazon was shutdown, receiving inbound shipments for non-essential items. We were all, you know, I mean, People were just thinking to, you know, give up or, I mean, some categories are totally crushed, like travel products, you know, you know, like summer, summer things, you know, like, you know, going outside, you know, it’s similar to travel, but you know, like summer kind of products, outdoor, I mean, these guys, these kinds of categories got crushed.

[00:29:40] And, for sure, and, I know some of these people, so. I quite about diversifying in between categories.  It’s not fool-proof in this case because everybody were hit or almost everybody, but maybe that’s something to do in the business. Yes, I’m in outdoor, but I also do Medical quick. I mean, it’s a pretty, COVID it wasn’t really something most people would say to do, because unless you’re a big seller, because it’s about focus, right.

[00:30:10] And you got to know your product, you gotta know your market is kind of a lot of time and investments. So maybe in a post COVID world, maybe there will be that idea of diversifying categories, but at least pre-COVID we all do then, to really focus on. Focus on one niche, you know? Cause that’s your advantage.

[00:30:31] You get to know this. Yes. That’s how you can make value. I would still, put something on the back burner either as a business diversify among categories or have some kind of other investments or side job that I can rely on if things, another cat and what I’ve kind of been saying a little bit is.

[00:30:56] Try to also have, you know, podcasts or info products or services on top of your product, you know, we’re we’re. I mean, I think you also like Gary Vee or the whole idea of media and commerce, like I’ve said this a few times in the shows, but you’re selling a product, but you’re also a brand which is selling experience.

[00:31:19] So you could teach people how to teach people in that category, you know, online training or blogging. You know, you could let me cut books, you know, you could also do services in the category, you know, you could, uh, Yeah, diversify in that way instead of going to multiple categories, but it might almost be easier for most Amazon sellers to just do another category because.

[00:31:41] To do a service or a, you know, information product is another type of mindset as well. Right. But that’s, people will think about it and I’ve seen really good sellers. They build out a true website and a true brand. You know what I mean? We send it to all sorts in this, in this podcast is we’re trying to build true, true brands, not, not just Amazon brands.

[00:32:03] And that could be another way to diversify. It’s a risky from Amazon to build an app to only trust them, because then they eat you out. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, so we’re getting to here, let’s maybe, maybe move towards the investments. So, you know, I’ll be honest. I think, you know, me too, I usually double down on my business and my projects, you know, I’m always investing in business.

[00:32:33] But I would like to hear some of your other strategies where, you know, he said earlier in the podcast to investing, what do you, what do you think are some good ways for entrepreneur business owners to invest? Invest. So, people thinking about investment of, I want my money to work for me. And when you’re saying for me, what is what it is that is for you, what it is that you want.

[00:33:07] And I’m going back to the long-term planning and nightmare. We’ll speak about the specific investments, in a minute, but you want your investments to support your long-term life plans. That’s the most important thing. We want to align the finances and investments with your future desired lifestyle.

[00:33:30] It’s how we get the most control and clarity of where we’re at, where we’re going and where we want to get at the end. What’s our goal. So I’ll give a few examples. If I’m thinking if I have little kids and I know that I want to help them with college in 20 years or 18 years. And, and I thinking about these and like, Oh, okay.

[00:34:00] I can just, you know, it’s not urgent. I still have 18 more years. they were just born. But instead of that, and then, you know, uh, three years, two years before college, like, Oh my God, they need. Whatever crazy amount of money you need for college. and then you get into loans and, and basically you don’t know how to deal with that, but if you start very early, you know, in advance, how much.

[00:34:29] You can estimate how much money you need with a slick inflation and everything. Um, but you can double down on investments that make higher retort returns. Long-term let’s say the American stock market S and P between seven to 10% a year. Depends how you count, uh, inflation inflation on inflation, but you can.

[00:34:50] You can get ready for that to make, even make a lot of money going towards your, uh, uh, future goal of that. So you take that money every month or every six months or every year and save and invest that. And you know that this is for the bucket of college for your kids. Okay. That, that, that’s an, thinking a way to think about this.

[00:35:14] But there are other. Ways to, to, you know, to think about investments. Let’s say that I want to have, um, a trip with my family every year. Okay. And I want to do this for the next 15 years, because it’s really important for me. It’s part of who we are. We travel a lot, and it it’s an expensive trip.

[00:35:40] It’s an expense. Okay. However, now, My strategy here for, you know, let’s say that you’re going for trips in 10, 15 years, and you already try to save for them now is that the returns will be very nice, but they can be even better with other types of investment. Think about a crowd investing. Think about investing in other websites, think about P2P, all these kinds of things that you can diversify too.

[00:36:10] However, they are more, there are riskier of course. Right. But the goal is not that important. Meaning if I don’t have money for my child’s college, that’s a bad thing. Assuming they want to go to college, but if you won’t make a trip one year because the investment went down. Okay. But you still are able to get you know, you still able to enjoy a higher return over the years with a higher risk to that goal.

[00:36:47] So, these, these are the kind of thing you can think about when you’re, when you plan. Yes, you can go and put the, your, your money in, in, you know, in different investments and just let it go. But if you think about your life goals and future expenses, that makes things makes much more sense and much easier it’s example.

[00:37:12] I know that we suppose to change our car in about. Two years. So I found, crypto backed, um, crypto back, platform called, Nexo and they pay 8% over the money that I put in there. Did I put a lot of money there? No, but I put enough money. So in two years I’ll have enough to buy that car and I’m making money for that.

[00:37:41] I already put this in advance. Okay. Now it’s not foolproof because that platform might go bust. I dunno why they seem pretty stable now for one check, but it’s not the only investment that I have. And it’s, it’s a portion of what I need and. And, you know, even if I’m not going to buy a car in two years, because I won’t have the money.

[00:38:07] So in three years I can do this. Okay. So there is a way to play with this, with this deadline. Okay, but this is a matter of, this is an example of aligning your future expense to what you need to do today to make it happen and also make money along the way. Instead of, you know, I don’t want to think in two years, Oh, I need, now I need to buy a car and put a, the whole old money in advance.

[00:38:31] Now I’m making money along the way and plan for this. All right. Does that make sense? It makes sense. It makes sense. I like it, man. I like sharing some of those, uh, strategies in the, I mean, it’s about, I think what you’re saying is you’re, you’re also diversifying and you’re even thinking, you mentioned they might go bust, they might disappear.

[00:38:52] I might lose a course. You don’t want that to happen, but you’re that, that exchange might go bankrupt. You know, like I was literally talking to a friend, uh, just before this podcast about Mt. Gox, you know? And, I met somebody at Starbucks. And, uh, when Mt. Gox was around the, I don’t know if you wanna exchange it’s it’s the bankrupt exchange.

[00:39:13] They were one of the first, exchanges for crypto, for Bitcoin. And they, again, I haven’t followed it lately, but they basically disappeared or they went bankrupt. Or if you had money in it, you lost it. They, they went bankrupt for whatever reason. And, that, that person we saw in Starbucks every day, trading on Mt.

[00:39:33] Gox, he stopped showing up. When it happened, we, we wanted to ask them and I feel really bad because it seemed, I can’t imagine he probably had most of his money in there, you know? So that’s also the lesson for crypto is you don’t keep all your money on the exchange. You could take it out to a cold wallet and take it out.

[00:39:57] Plus I have other examples. So you know, crowd investing, I invested in a few crowd investing platforms and as much due diligence that I’ve done over these platforms, two out of the four that I invested in, were a scam that was very sad to lose that money. And now there is pursuing them and yes, it makes progress.

[00:40:23] But I lost there. Did that change my lifestyle? Does that influence my life so much? No, it didn’t, it was sad losing it. I hope I’ll get that money back, but that was thinking, okay. Feeling okay. Putting that much money in there and take that risk for the high return, but it’s not the only thing that I invest in.

[00:40:47] Yeah. I think, I think, I think that’s the main point is it’s diversification, whether it’s your, you know, categories in Amazon or your investments in indifference.  You know, alternative investing, which has a higher ROI, right? You can make a heck of a lot more money than putting it in like a money market savings accounts in a bank, which might even go negatives.

[00:41:10] I don’t know. I don’t even know if negative is gonna happen, but, Europe, it happens in Europe. If you have a, if you’re investing in Europe, this is what you get.

[00:41:25] But if you want to go into the more traditional things, then, you know, you go to Western, stock markets, like the, especially the US and you’re thinking long-term, it’s very likely that you get the returns that are there on the data that is out there and the statistics. But this, this goes specifically with this one.

[00:41:45] It’s only if you’re really going. Long-term like the example I gave about college, a down payment for a house in 10 years, things like that shorter ones. Yes. You will have to go through the cycle and if you need the money, when the cycle is down, that’s a problem. Yep. Speaking about it, another one is I I’m invested in HSBC insurance and I can’t, if I take out the insurance I’ll lose like most of the premium, you know, they you’re kind of locked in long-term and even if you, canceled it and want the money to take 60 days to get the check in the mail, you know, so yeah.

[00:42:24] I mean, there’s definitely a blessing there. Saying they get, I mean, it’s not really a return. It’s more like a whole life insurance life insurance. Okay. It’s a life insurance. So it’s a different product for a catastrophe that you have in your life, but it’s not that you’re getting the returns. This is another way of diversifying yourself.

[00:42:46] I mean, if your family will need you one, if you’re gone, God forbid, then. Then this is something that you will need, but 60 days kind of sound, you know, they will need that money. So something to look into there. Well, no, no. I mean, if I want to cancel the, get my premium, I get it. I don’t want to cancel it and then get the money out.

[00:43:09] It takes 60 days. There’s still some savings component into this. Got it. Okay. Yeah, we’ll get, you know, it’s, it’s been a great conversation. I think we should start to, you know, start to wrap up, but I would love to learn more, you know, maybe share what you’re working on and how people hi, how you can help some listeners.

[00:43:29] A lot has been going on.

[00:43:33] So I, basically had one program which has, which I’m running, with the name free financial self program, but it became instead of a three months program, I now have a three day program, a three months program and a yearly program. So it really, you know, fits for different people at different stages of where they are.

[00:43:59] And just now, and it’s the first time I’m saying it publicly I’m opening an online group financial coaching for people who wants to get it to the next level. It’s a monthly, it’s a monthly call with a group support where people can ask questions, and basically make progress with their finances.

[00:44:27] You know, they, they of course do the work at home, but they at least have some guidance and have somebody to, to work with on an ongoing basis. So these are few things that’s happening right now. And the last thing is that I’m writing a book which is supposed to come out in the summer. I hope. Yep.

[00:44:49] That’s that’s another thing. So yeah, I’m a sucker I bought, I buy almost all the books of my friends and guests, in fact. So let you know when he’s going, pre-sale yeah, yeah and then of course we can link on the show notes to these different things, but what’s the best way for people to, to find you or connect with you.

[00:45:13] So, first of all, I want to mention the giveaway that I, I, I mentioned before, and this is to know how much you are worth. It’s really so important to do that periodically, every quarter or preferably every month. So go to freefinancialself.com/gfam. So that’s Global From Asia, M is for Mike, and go. That’s

[00:45:47] Especially for the listeners. Go, go there and download that one. I would just got a message from my VA saying that we have some kind of a problem with the server. So maybe just hold on a little bit with this. You put it in the show notes. I apologize about this. But we’ll have it online today and more information is freefinancialself.com and I’m on every social media channel you can think of.

[00:46:13] LinkedIn is my name, Free Financial Self page on Facebook and also my name in Instagram Free Financial Self. And last one is Twitter Free Financial Self because too many characters. Awesome. Okay. And, I’m checking the pain. I don’t think there’s an M at least right now, but w w we’ll uh, we’ll put the right.

[00:46:34] It’s just GFA for me, I’m just testing. Okay. So the GFA works. Okay. You’re you’re faster than me. I didn’t, I can check with my VA right now. Let’s do that. Great.

[00:46:47] Well, I’m really happy and, awesome to have you on, on the show sharing. So, and then I hope people take you up on this offer. I mean, it’s a, it’s amazing. You always help, uh, help me and others. And I noticed this. I’m really happy to see you doing what you love to do so great. Thank you very much. Great being here.

[00:47:07] Thank you for inviting. Cheers. So let’s start 2021 out right gfavip.com. We are going all in on masterminds. Online masterminds. We’ve actually gotten the best response from our community. We also have private sessions. Andy Lee, might’ve heard on the show earlier. He’s doing a special exclusive drop shipping for 2021 session just for our members, not, not a public, but besides those sessions in our online courses library, we also are doing these masterminds at mastermind.gfavip.com, where we have drop shipping, Amazon FBA, and B2B trading influencers.

[00:47:44] And we’re trying to adding more times more groups, usually five to six people. Okay. We have some software to help that go and being part of that would support the show, but also support you. And we want you to succeed. We hope this content helps you. You know, it’s over seven years, 300, and I can’t even last, 339 shows gfavip.com apply application only.

[00:48:07] We want to just know a little bit more about people before they get in, and then we want to work with you to succeed. Hope to see you there. Bye-bye. All right. Thank you so much for sharing Shlomo. Eat my Snickers. I’m still kind of adopting. So looking at myself on camera, cause we’re doing a video podcast.

[00:48:22] I still have a feeling most of you are listening to this because most of the people I talk to listen to this on the audio. When they’re running, maybe eating a bicycle, walking a dog, but we do do the video so you can watch me eat a Snickers and. But thank you so much, man. He’s a great friend. And if you really need some help with your financials.

[00:48:44] I mean, he’s a pro you know, he’s based in Israel, you know, they’re, they’re the best at numbers seriously. So, and as a compliment, hope you guys take it that way. But, Shlomo is amazing. He’s helped me out a lot. And so I said the intro, I was going to talk a little bit about the new year. So not a snicker here.

[00:49:10] 2021. I mean, we, we, we better have a 10 next year. You know, some of us have been hit hard. I’ve talked to have asked him emotional conversations with a lot of you in a community, you know, separated from families, deaths, businesses, collapsing. I know some people have done really well. I mean, honestly, e-commerce has been the boom.

[00:49:29] I, I, some people have had their best years ever, but I know quite a few of you have had, uh, your worst year ever. I mean, for me, it’s been traumatic. So fortunately I got back with my family. I know some others that have been separated from their families for most of the year. So let’s make it up next year.

[00:49:48] What we’ve told, you know, we had a skip to try and look nice. We had to skip the cross-border summit would have been our fifth annual 2020, but we didn’t move the online. But what we are doing is masterminds. We have our VIP community GFAVIP, a few of you are involved in that and supporting it is paid part of what we do, but it does support this show it, you know, it’s just me, you know, you just see me here, but there’s a big team.

[00:50:10] I mean, at least I think as a baby, we have about 10 people here. I’m mostly doing content marketing content creation, but to do help with this show. It supports the thing we do. We especially missing the event. So if you were doing masterminds, we, we did a couple in December and we’ll start to make groups and we’re making more groups and we’re doing US times friendly and we’re doing Asia Europe time friendly.

[00:50:34] And we got topics on Amazon FBA, which has been a hot one drop ship, you know, B2B traits, sustainability with Fernanda. So. You know, and new ones are forming. So if you want to get involved with that, it is a good time to start the new year off. Right. With a good little group of five or six people, and it’s also the other groups happening.

[00:50:55] So you get as extra energy. It’s not just a small group, but you can see others coming in and we’re going to try to interact with each other and have special guests sometimes or special sessions. I know it’s not the same as in real life. I understand what we’re all strapped. I mean, I don’t know how long 2021 we’re going to be trapped, but we’re working to be adopting online as much as we can start a new Amazon brand.

[00:51:17] It’s finally got the seller central account approved. You know what, we’re not minority partner. I’m working with the factory, getting that going. Sorry. I won’t be as transparent as the last brand. You know, there’s a few different reasons for that, but you know, we got the book e-commerce gladiator actually sitting here right next to me.

[00:51:40] So you can check out that whole story or there it is for those watching on video. But, you know, and I’m trying to get to Thailand by hopefully the summer, you know, I’m English teacher here for my two kids, you know, I never thought I was gonna be English teacher just there’s, you know, I, I respect the English teachers, you know, I have friends that are English teachers, but it’s, I don’t want patients to be any kind of a teacher, especially like a language teacher, you know, especially like I don’t have patients.

[00:52:07] So that’s challenged for me. And I’ve, you know, they test my patients, kids, kids, test patients, but probably have to be another half a year with English teacher until I get them down to Thailand because I’m basically the only English speaking person besides my wife, you know, which isn’t native English.

[00:52:23] So I’m my, I’m doing my best and all of us are, we have to adapt. Let me take another place Snickers, but no, I hope, I hope everybody’s doing well. We want to do Cross Border Summit in 2021, but I don’t know if anybody doesn’t get doing events right now can plan for next year. And usually we like to at least give it, I mean, I think one, we did four months in advance, but usually six months even earlier, but I mean, a lot of us are excited about it.

[00:52:50] We can’t really can’t wait to do it. It’s going to be better than ever, and we’re going to plan, but I don’t even know if it’s going to be able to be done in 2021. It might be a 20, 22 team, honestly, because we want to build it up. We want to get amazing speakers. We actually want to make extra events before extra events, after main event in the middle.

[00:53:08] You know, we want to make this thing amazing. So, you know, that’s hard to tell you right now, but you know, and just grinding here. I love creating content. We got, we have a network of other sites. You know, and it got our e-commerce business starting up again, um, and a membership and the masterminds. So I hope you would love to get involved behind the scenes.

[00:53:30] I know some of you enjoy these shows know popping out of your earbuds and going onto a computer and reaching out to us. It’d be pretty cool to get more people involved in our online community. So with that, We’re over and out for now. Take care. To get more involved in running an international business.

[00:53:52] Please visit our website at www.globalfromasia.com. That’s www.globalfromasia.com. Also be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.