Episode 55 | Ryan Guina | Military Millionaire

00:00 - 05:00

David:

What's up military millionaires! I'm your host David Pere today is a little bit different. Because although I'm recording this from my normal studio, the actual episode takes place in fincon at the NEFE sponsored podcasting booth on some really nice microphones, you'll hear a lot of networking in the background. But that's just because this is a super fun kinetic event. I absolutely love fincon. And I love that I got to do this.

So Ryan Guina our guest for today, he was active duty military. Now. He's in the reserves. And he is a blogger. And when I say blogger, I mean, yes, he makes all of his income. Well, not all of his income. But he makes a living and he was living on just the income from his blog. And until he went to the reserves, he made a little bit of money off the reserves, obviously, not much. But his money comes primarily from blogging, which is just an interesting way to look at entrepreneurship. So we're going to dig a little bit into what it takes to grow a blog to be that successful.

If this is your first time listening. Thanks for joining the community. This podcast is produced every week for your enjoyment and show notes are found at Frommilitarytomillionaire.com/podcast. Now relax and enjoy the show.

Intro:

You're listening to the military millionaire podcast, a show about real estate investing for the working class. Stay tuned as we explore ways to help you improve your finances, build wealth through real estate and become a person that is worth knowing.

David:

Instead of doing a sponsorship spot today, I wanted to take just a moment to talk to you about our community. And what I really wanted to just get across is that if you're listening to this podcast, and you haven't jumped into the Facebook group, or followed us on YouTube, you absolutely should.

So the Facebook group is facebook.com/groups/militarymillionaire or you could just type in From military to millionaire and the YouTube channel, just type in From military to millionaire. Both will pop up, I definitely suggest that you follow the YouTube channel because you can see these podcasts visually. But you'll also get a Monday and Wednesday video with a lot more content specifically for this community. And the Facebook group because it is just so active, it just blows my mind how many comments every post gets. So if you have a question about real estate, entrepreneurship or life or transitioning out of the military or anything, jump into that community, post a little bit about yourself, post your question and I would just, you will be absolutely overwhelmed by the response and the helpfulness of that community.

So I just wanted to plug all that today. Thank you once again for listening to the show. And enjoy.

David:

We're rolling.

Alright. Welcome to From military to millionaire podcast. We are recording live from the nifi podcasting stage here at fincon 2019 in Washington, DC. And I'm here with Ryan Guina, did I speak that correctly?

Ryan:

Yeah!

David:

I should have asked that before we started recording.

But so Ryan is, as I know, a blogger. But Ryan has done a lot of different entrepreneurial things as well as being active duty military and reserve military. So I just kind of wanted to bring him on the show and let him tell a little bit about his story.

So Ryan, welcome aboard.

Ryan:

Yeah. Hey, thanks for having me, David.

Yeah, so my story is I did six and a half years on active duty five deployments in that time, a one year special duty assignment, and I was just completely burnt out, and I just needed a break. So I had a clean break from service and got out of the military, moved halfway across the nation, got married and tried to find a job took me six months. So it was just a huge, you know, everybody has a different transition story. And that was mine. And at the time, I was just trying to learn everything I could about personal finance, investing 401K's my wife had a house or mortgage life insurance, all these things that when you're active duty, they're taken care of for you in the sense like you have one choice for life insurance, you can get more, but you have an easy choice with SGLI tsp is your 401k equivalent, you got base housing, so you can do that or just use your BAH to rent. That's what I did. So I just had to adult really fast, and I was learning everything that I could. And in that process, I started reading a lot of blogs. Now this was back in 2006, in early 2007, when blogs were very new. And it just amazed me that some random person could start their own website.

So I learned about that and started my own to keep notes in a journal of what I was learning. And that helped me in my process. And then I just started getting traffic and getting more traffic. And it got to the point where I started putting ads on the site making a little bit of money. And once I became to and next thing I knew, you know, my wife and I had our daughter, she had call it she never slept and it came down to I either had to quit my day job or you know, really dial back on the websites and the websites were actually making more money than my day job at that point. So it was kind of a no brainer, and that was nine and a half years ago and I haven't looked back.

So that's how I got to where I am today. Well, I guess one other side is eight and a half years after I left active duty and actually joined the Air National Guard. So I'm still serving in the reserve component. And I've been in for Yeah, so five years now in the guard. So total combined time, I have 12 years of service, I got about eight more for retirement if I want to stick through it. So that's where I am.

05:00 - 10:00

David:

Yeah, that's awesome. And that's, it's kind of cool. Something we'll probably have to talk about a little bit offline, just because I'm at that point where I'm at active duty, and I'm looking to transition potentially into the reserves, because I'm just at a point where the side hustles are becoming fun. And I want to kind of control my time, right. And I think a lot of people go through burnout in the military, and I think reserves is a really cool option.

Ryan:

Yeah, how many years active do you have?

David:

11

Ryan:

11 yeah, so you're kind of at a you know, that point where a lot of people say, Oh, you've already done half your time, you can't throw it away. First of all, that's a sunk cost fallacy, right? You can do what's best for your life at that time, right. So don't don't worry about what anybody else says. But the reserves and guard for Army and Air Force, that's a great opportunity to still serve still have access to the benefits. Through the garden reserves, you can buy low cost health insurance, you can still have your drill pay every month, you have opportunities to take extra orders. If you go IMA with the reserves, you can do a whole year's worth of your service, knock it out in a month and a half or so at some locations, sometimes a really good location and the rest you don't have to serve it, there's so many opportunities. You could even do active reserve where you're basically active duty, but you're in the reserve or a guard unit.

So a lot of ways to maintain your military connection and affiliation, still earn retirement benefits. Your health care is a big one for a lot of people. I know it was for me, before I joined the guard, I was paying almost 1000 a month for health insurance because I was self employed, but I didn't have access to, you know, any employer subsidies.

So yeah, there's a way that you can do that and still do the reserves and your side hustles. Man, that's a huge opportunity to really set yourself up for life, but also chase your passions, you know, not have to sell out for 20 years not saying military services and the sellout. That's not what I mean. But if it's not what your heart is, then you're selling yourself short, right? If you're forcing yourself to do something for that magical pension, you can still get that pension, but you can do it later. So there are tons of opportunities.

David:

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that's a decision I wrestle with, because you're right, you're right, everybody says that, you know, you're over the hump, you gotta stay until 20. And what I've been starting to realize is I look at the people saying that, and you know, they're farther along in their military career, but then the people who are saying I should get out and follow what my passion is, and the opportunities often in they're much further along in the way that I want to go in life like the guys. I'm like, Man, that's how I want to live my life. So I think that's kind of been a leading decision maker for me.

But yeah, so I'd be curious to ask from you. On the blogging standpoint, you know, what are some of your main? Like, what would you say are some things that if someone is looking to maybe monetize a blog a little bit, what are some things that you say are like entry level? Like, what you should probably start? Because I know a lot of people don't even understand I was talking to someone today.

Ryan:

Yeah.

David:

Didn't even think like, how do you make money through a website? There's a lot of people who don't even know that's an option.

Ryan:

Yeah, so let me give you the kind of 30,000 foot view. And then, you know, there's tons of other resources out there where you can find more, but for anybody who is listening in, hasn't run a blog, yet a blog is just your own website, you can write it as a daily journal, or, you know, this is what I ate kind of thing. But a blog could just also be a format for running a very deep informational website.

I have three of them now. And the two that I started, both of them have close to, one has got 600 articles, one's got almost 1000 articles. So these are just through the years. You know, I've been doing this for, what, 12 years now.

So one of them got almost 1000 articles, that's actually we actually cut back a lot because they were old and outdated. So we just deleted them and did some things. But over time, you can really build a lot of content. So to say blog, it could just be an informational website, it can be whatever you want it to be really, but the ways to make money. So there are three or four big picture ways. When you go to a website, you see banner ads, for example. That's one way that I monetize my sites. So when people come to the website, you see the banner ad, over to the side on the sidebar, in the content. Sometimes they pay per view, sometimes they pay per click, there's a lot of different ways you can earn revenue from that.

Another one is affiliate marketing. That's where I see I write an article in the USAA is one of the brands that I work with. And if somebody clicks on a link, they have the tracker tracking link and they go to the USA website and they go get an insurance quote, well, USA might give me a few dollars for that. And that's just how they get traffic to their site. And I'm happy to do that because I'm a USAA member, they've always given me great service. So that's just one example. There, it could also be like going to Amazon and you get a percentage of the sale. Like if somebody buys a book, I might get 4% of the sale. So they buy a $10 book and I get 40 cents.

10:00 - 15:00

Ryan:

So 40 cents one time doesn't make a lot of money. But if you do it 1000 times it does, right. And then another way is pay per click advertising. So you see something that's like Google AdSense, or there's some other competitors like media.net, somebody clicks on a link, you can get a few pennies to a few dollars per click, or there could be a rate chart, which shows a list of the best banks or best insurance companies or any different kind of vertical. And vertical just means topical area. And when they click on that, you can get a few dollars or a few cents per click, or however the rates work out. And then finally, there's sponsorships. So it could be Hey, this, we write a sponsored post for a company, they pay us X amount of dollars, and then we disclose that it's sponsored. And then the audience knows that, hey, this article is written, it is sponsored. But oh, it has good information, let me go find out more information about this company. So they click on the link. So they go visit their website, or maybe they just find it in the back of their head. And the next time they are looking for that product or service. That's what they remember. So those are kind of the four big picture ways. But there are 1000 different ways you can slice it. Some people get really creative, but those kinds of big pictures. Yeah.

David:

I like that you mentioned all those and you didn't bring up having to build courses and stuff. I mean, there's a lot of options in that realm.

Ryan:

Sure, yeah.

David:

But you brought up like, these are just ways that you can take essentially, people who are already coming and reading stuff on your website, and earn a little bit of money for what the content you're producing.

Ryan:

Yeah.

David:

Which is really cool. Because that takes maybe not less work, because obviously it takes work to rank on Google and these sites.

Ryan:

Oh sure.

David:

But it's a way that you can get something out of just providing value, right? Because the more value you provide through an article, the more people are going to come and look at it. So.

Ryan:

Yeah, absolutely.

Creating a course is definitely something I know a lot of people who are doing very, very well with courses were actually at a conference and 2600 of our closest friends. And people here are making money in 100 different ways.

Courses is one of them a podcast is and other people can put their advertising in the podcast. I know people who do printables downloadables, right, so maybe they'll write ebooks or write their own book.

Some people are doing YouTube channels, and they'll put the YouTube embed in their blog, and that you know, the more views and subscribers and there's lots of different things you can do.

So really any, any way that you can think of that can provide value to somebody and provide something that they're willing to pay for, whether that's an advertiser trying to reach new clients, or a customer that you might have that's looking for a solution to their problem. So there's always going to be a way to make money from.

David:

And I know that you definitely add value because I have, one of your sites. I don't know that we even mentioned what your sites are. But the military wallet, I'm always seeing it on Google when I'm searching for things through. In fact, it's funny because I'll be typing through something to research something for what I'm writing. And I'm like, oh, there's another article.

Ryan:

Yeah, that's huge. That's good to hear.

So it's interesting. I've, I've had a couple of my articles go big or, or I've written before, for, like I write for forbes.com, sometimes where I've had articles syndicated and things like that. And I've had people reach out to me that I haven't spoken to in a few years. And like, dude, I just saw you on the front page of Yahoo, for example. And it's kind of fun to do that.

And another one. So my last name is spelled Guina. It's not a very common name. And my brother was at work . He retired from the Marine Corps, actually. So he was there. And his buddy goes, Hey, Greg, check this out. And it was an article he'd written. And my brother looked at he goes, Yeah, he's like, Look, it's good. He's like, dude, my brother wrote that. And he looks it goes, Oh, really? My last name is not that common. And he's like, Oh, I just thought it was another Guinal. So, you know, this is one of those things.

But yeah, no, it's good to hear that. That is reaching people. And obviously, that's what we want to do is just help people. And I didn't mention my name about my website here. It's not about me. My goal here is just to help people, right? So if we can do that, let's just do it. So.

David:

Yeah, that's awesome. So I would ask on the lines of helping people, because this is a question I get all the time.

So I'm curious, did you have prior experience writing before you got into the blogging world?

Ryan:

Absolutely not, outside of like school assignments. And I had no website development skills, I still don't have much. The barrier to entry now is easier than ever. If you have an idea for a website, you can go down to YouTube or online just right. Type in how to start a blog and you can find an illustrated tutorial or visual tutorial that will show you how to start a website in 10 minutes, no joke from start to finish registering your domain name, starting a web host doing WordPress and boom, you're done. And it was much more difficult 12 years ago is not as easy it is now. But I figured it out with some tutorials and taught myself basically everything and I consider myself to be no smarter than the average man, you know, it's just, you stick with it for 10-12 years, you're going to get good at it right? So you will become a better writer. If you're not a great writer now, then that's fine, right? Write what you can write what you know right from the heart and constantly work on it.

15:00 - 20:00

There's tools out there like Grammarly that are good one. It's a free tool you plug in, that you put in your browser and then it shows you like misspellings, Miss punctuations, and stuff like that. That's huge, right? It's like a spell checker, but in your browser. So as I'm typing, I have that going. So I'm like, Oh, I misspelled that again, or I missed that comma, again, that's fine. Just go fix those, make it as good as you can and move on. And, you know, there are the internet police right there. Grammar police, you know, don't worry about those folks. Don't worry about making something perfect. Just get it good enough and ship it. And the more you do, the better you'll get. And I wish I would have told myself that 12 years ago, but you know, it's one of the things you learn as you practice the more you do it, the better you get.

David:

Yeah, that's huge because I failed English class in high school. And yeah, Grammarly definitely saves me a lot. So it's, it's been fun to watch stuff too, you know, I don't definitely not written anywhere near as much as you have. But it's been a lot of fun to see stuff start to get to a point where I'm like, Oh, I wrote that. And somebody said it was a good article. And compared to where I was, you know, back when I first joined the Marine Corps, and I was, I wrote like you would expect an enlisted marine to write.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Are you still using crowns?

David:

Eating crowns. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, that's the go-to right.

Ryan:

Yeah. Right.

David:

It's been a fun transition.

Ryan:

Yeah.

And the thing about. So Tim Ferriss, if you're in the entrepreneurial space, you probably know who he is. He wrote the four hour workweek, Four Hour Body, Tools of Titans and several other really good books Four Hour Chef. And he's like this tremendous polymath. And for those who don't know what a polymath is, it just means somebody who's really well educated in a lot of different fields, like he is tremendously talented in many aspects of his life. And he started one of the most popular podcasts on the air, the Tim Ferriss show. And what he started with is like, I'm gonna start this as an experiment. And the reason I want to do this is I want to create a skill, or do something that's going to have some skill behind it. And no matter what happens, even if it's not a failure, or not a success, even if it's a failure, I'm still going to learn something from this process.

And that's the way I looked at starting my websites. It's, I don't know anything about blogging, and I'm not a writer, I wasn't at the time, I consider myself, okay, now not bad. But it's a skill, and I don't know anything about it, but I'm gonna try it. And even if it's a massive failure, I'm gonna learn something. And not only did I learn something, but 12 years later, it's my life. And I'm able to support my family, running a website. And when I went to high school, I did years of college before I joined the Air Force, that wasn't even a thing. Like I joined the Air Force in 99. And websites where you had to be super technical to set one up, you didn't really know what you're doing. This was not that at all. And or at least it wasn't something I could ever envision myself doing. It wasn't a career field that existed, really.

And I just kind of fell into the right place at the right time. But you can still do that today, you can start a website. And just if you want to do it, do it for fun, or do it to build a skill. And you will, you'll get smarter, you'll get better, you'll become more intelligent, you're going to learn how things work together, and it is tremendous. There's no downside to it.

David:

Yeah, that's absolutely huge.

So I would be curious to know if you were normally asked this from a real estate standpoint, but we're gonna ask you here. So if a young individual is walk up to you asking you for advice on starting a starting a website, starting a blog, and you only had a minute or two to talk to me, I'd be curious to know if you could give us one like, piece of advice, and maybe one don't, as it were for getting into the blogging space.

Ryan:

Yeah, so I think the biggest one I just gave you was like it's a life skill. You're just starting it, you're going to build a life skill, right? And somebody says, well, you don't need a website to go live. No, but you're learning how to communicate better, more concisely. And that's huge communication is one of the most sought after skill sets among employers right now.

So yeah, I would say, there's no downside to starting. And you're gonna build skills by doing it. So just do it. whatever topic you want it to be doesn't matter. You're going to learn to write better. Think better. Put your thoughts down on paper, so do it. what not to do, don't do it just for the money. Like I make a living doing this. That's fine. And I know a lot of people who do. I know I've got several friends who have sold for seven figures, multiple, seven figures, which is tremendous. The idea of doing that just blows my mind. But don't do it just chasing dollar signs because you're not going to be authentic. You're not going to be doing it for the right reasons. And then it's going to show it's going to come through. And you're not going to build that trust with your readers and or listeners, if it's a podcast or video, you have people watching your audience.

So just really do it for the authentic reasons, do it for the right reasons, and do it to try to help people. And over time you're going to become successful.

20:00 - 25:00

David:

Yeah, yeah, I agree. That's awesome.

So, Ryan, before we wrap this up, I just would be curious to ask if you have any parting advice, big ideas, or any other topics that we didn't really touch on, you'd like to reach the subject on?

Ryan:

In relation to what?

David:

Oh, see, that's my super catch all like, I didn't even.

So normally, I focus on the entrepreneurial side of getting out of the military. And I often ask, you know, it's often a lot of real estate stuff, but I kind of wanted to differ from that this time. But I guess I would just ask, like, what kind of things have you learned from transitioning from the military into the entrepreneurial space that you think would be that? No, that's so for me, one of the things I'm struggling with right now, is that I have spent the last 11 years living in a very, the military is still very industrial, right?

Ryan:

Yeah.

David:

And so the four hour workweek, which you mentioned earlier, was mind blowing to think like, Oh, you can actually be more efficient with this. And then like, go home?

Ryan:

Yeah.

David:

But I'd be curious to think, or to ask kind of what some of that transition looked like for you, as far as entrepreneurial. Like, if you have any advice for me, it was a super broad subject, but.

Ryan:

It is, you know, the transition for me was very difficult, because I went from going 100 miles an hour and active duty to being unemployed for six months, and relocated to, you know, halfway across the US, right? I didn't know anybody got married right away. And that part was hard. And then I started a day job, and then that transition was okay. But when I was in corporate America, I just always was thinking like, yeah, okay, I'm going to go get my MBA and be a fast burner. Because I can do it, you know, go getter. And then it just, I kind of, I don't wanna say disillusion, but I kept thinking, is there something more? Is there something more what, what do I want to be doing? And what I wanted to do was just to be creative.

So for me, it was a creative outlet was starting these websites. And through that, I mean, I've met so many tremendous people, a lot of friends here, at this conference. But I've also met a lot of readers, I've helped a lot of people. And so for me, it was all about having that creative outlet.

So no matter what you do, as you make your trend, if you make this transition, make sure that you're doing it for the right reasons that you're having some kind of, you're building something for yourself, right. So too many people put all their eggs in one basket, they put it in their employer, and they think, Oh, my employer is going to take care of me or I have a good job, I don't have to worry about anything else, I'm of the I want to always be doing something for me, because nobody else is going to do it. So and that's something I learned, like when I transitioned out of the military, I didn't really have that kind of support system, I didn't have something for myself already. If you can build it now like you're doing, that's huge, like that transition is going to be so much easier for you. I'm not saying it will be easy, but it will be easier, because you will have some consistency.

Like when I got an active active duty, done, like hitting a brick wall from 100 miles an hour, you're you're just off one day you stop turning wrenches, you stop working your 10 hour shifts, or whatever you're doing, and you're no longer leading a team, you're no longer in charge of things. And that identity is gone.

So if you can have something you identify with outside of the military or outside of your day job, or whatever it is, you're going to be so much further along than you would be otherwise. And it doesn't have to be another business. It could be mentoring other people, maybe you volunteer with some organization, some kind of consistency outside of work, that's going to make your transition better.

And for me, I wish I would have had my websites before I left active duty. It would have made that easier. But I really wouldn't go back and change that because I've learned so much through that process.

David:

Yeah, that's huge.

And that's ironically, you say that that's one of the reasons I started this as I was there were a couple of decision factors behind it. But one of them was that I knew if and when I got out of the military. People were struggling with finding a purpose.

Ryan:

Yeah.

David:

Man, I got to try to find a purpose before then. And I've definitely found enough of a purpose that I'm looking at replacing the military with it for the most part.

Ryan:

Yeah.

David:

Which is really crazy. But it's been a wild ride.

Ryan:

Yeah. And, you know, a place in the military. That's something I did not do. I was so burnt out from active duty. That it was tough. I didn't realize I could go back and I later had a VA disability rating. I had some knee surgeries while I was on active duty.

So once I had that I was like why can't go back in turns out you actually can you just need to go get a waiver. It's not a difficult process. And I've written about that. And that's actually been helped so many veterans come back in thought they couldn't.

25:00 - 26:55

Ryan:

So I ended up joining the military half years after I was out because I missed being part of that community. Like I can always raise my hand. So yeah, I was a veteran I served. But to continue serving for me is huge. And to be able to write about that on the military wallet, and to be able to continue to help veterans and you know, just be an active, more active part of that community is huge.

So going from active duty to nothing can be difficult. But if you're transitioning to like a Guard or Reserve unit, I've talked to a lot of people who do that. And they said, Matt, it helped with their transition, because they still have that continuity there. They just didn't have to do it every day. And that's what they were doing. Maybe they were, they wanted to get out and chase some other kind of lifestyle, or they wanted to do a different job on the outside, or they just wanted to do something, maybe more stability, less PCs in less deployments, that kind of thing.

So there's no right or wrong, really, it's just sitting down to figure out what's most important to you and your family. And then chasing that, right, you write your script. But if you can have some continuity in there, whether it's your websites, or real estate, or small business in the background, or maybe it's being part of your inactive party or community or volunteering or doing something as long as you have something outside of your work that you can identify with, maybe so much further along than in where, where you would be otherwise. And that's coming from experience. I had a difficult time with it.

David:

Awesome.

Ryan, I really appreciate you taking a little bit of time to join us. Is there anything you'd like to add before we kind of wrap this up?

Horaaa, simplify.

Alright, so I would just like to ask that, you know, where can people get a hold of you if they'd like to reach out?

Ryan:

Yeah, the best way is through my websites. I've got two of them right now. It's Cashmoneylife.com and themilitarywallet.com.

Military questions. I help a lot of veterans. A lot of people send me emails, questions, stuff like that. I'm always happy to help. I'm not on social too much. So through the websites the best place.

David:

Awesome.

Ryan, thank you very much for joining us.

Ryan:

Thanks, Dave.

David:

Also, thanks to NEFE the National Endowment for financial education for sponsoring live podcasting at fincon 2019.