The Untapped Potential of Online Business Ownership - Episode 51
We are joined today by our guest, Matt Raad, an expert in the field of digital real estate, to explore the often-overlooked world of online business investments. Matt shares his journey from brick-and-mortar business ownership to mastering the art of buying and selling online businesses. He discusses the advantages of digital assets over traditional business models, emphasizing the potential for semi-passive income, geographical freedom, and the low-risk entry into entrepreneurship. Through real-life success stories and practical advice, Matt demystifies the process of building a lucrative online portfolio, from conducting due diligence to strategically exiting investments. I hope this episode serves as a comprehensive guide for aspiring digital investors, and how to leverage online opportunities for wealth creation.
About our guest:
Matt Raad has defied convention and achieved financial freedom through a unique path. Starting with nothing, he built a high cash flow portfolio by buying and selling businesses. Today, he is a recognized authority in website investments, using digital assets to generate wealth. He successfully transitioned to the digital world and now focuses on helping people achieve financial independence through leveraged, high cash-flow, and location-independent digital skills. Matt's expertise extends beyond investments. He is an Angel Investor and a sought-after public speaker, sharing his knowledge and empowering others to succeed in digital marketing and online business.
Resources and Links Mentioned:
eBusiness Institute
Online Masterclass with Liz and Matt Raad
Digital Investors Podcast - In Apple Podcast, Spotify, Youtube, Amazon Music
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TRANSCRIPT:
Naseema McElroy: [00:00:00] All right. All right. My financially intentional people. I'm excited to be joined by Matt Raad all the way from Australia here. And he is going to put you guys up on game on this kind of digital real estate that we don't.
Know about, there's it's so many things that I mean it's an asset class that I, didn't even know existed until I saw his portfolio and then offered him to be on the show because I was just like really this is the thing. This is something that people do.
And so I just really, I want you guys to know what's possible for you, and I'm going to turn it over to Matt because he can explain this avenue of wealth building and creation that is attainable for all of us. But, we just didn't know what was possible. So I'm excited to have you on that because I know people will get some.
Good value from [00:01:00] this and just in this environment that we're in, there's so many people looking for alternative ways to generate income. I think, people were really, find a lot of value in what you're sharing. So thank you for joining me at six o'clock in the morning from Australia and I'll turn it over to you.
So you can just explain what this is that you do and how you help people create these digital assets.
Matt Raad: Oh, thank you so for that for the intro but also for having me on. It's really cool chatting to you and finding out about your community, because like you said. I think what Liz and I do, Liz is my wife how we've made our wealth is quite unique. And for your community, maybe it's something they hadn't considered before.
And that is buying and selling online businesses. And like you said, Naseema, most people, you see these websites every single day of the week, and you don't realize they're typically semi passive cash generating businesses. And [00:02:00] we're not talking e commerce businesses here. When most people think of.
Online businesses, they naturally think e commerce, Amazon style businesses, Liz and I do none of that. All we have, how we make our money, is what's called off content sites. And we literally, they're like a billboard. They just have ads sitting on them, and we make passive income off those ads. So when people click on them, we get paid by like Google or affiliate offers.
So it's a really simple business model. And Naseema, should I mention what you and I were talking off camera about, which you found interesting.
So I'm in Australia and just so you know, most of our, I'd say 95 percent of our online businesses are based in the US. So that's why we were so attracted to this years ago when we discovered it, because there's no barriers.
We can make money from wherever we want in the world. So we're on the other side of the planet and we love the US. We get, we've taken our kids there and everything like that. [00:03:00] And being in California, done the classic trip. But while we're traveling, we still make money no matter where we are because our websites run 24 seven and there's no geographical barriers.
So for us. In a nutshell, that was always our life goals, our business goals in life. We've been buying and selling businesses since Liz and I met each other and got together. And we started out with bricks and mortar businesses. And then when our kids came along and we wanted more to work from home, we, this was about back in 2008 around the GFC.
That's when we started buying and selling online businesses. So we just did what we used to do with bricks and mortar businesses. But we did it with online businesses back then no one else was doing it or not many people and, but we just figured out how we could, the sorts of sites we wanted to buy.
And we always, we were very influenced by books like Rich Dad Poor Dad with Robert Kiyosaki. And we [00:04:00] always wanted businesses that were, Semi passive where we didn't need to have us working in them nine till five. That was super, super important and we wanted them, we wanted the flexibility to work from home because we live in the country which is nice.
It's a nice way to raise our kids too and internet businesses gave us all of that. We could live wherever we want, travel, they work 24 seven and more importantly, there was no geographical barriers for us being in Australia. Australia is quite a small. Like population and country really, so for us to be able to have access to America, where there's 300 million people, that's how we make our money.
We, with the more eyeballs we have on our websites, we make lots more money.
Naseema McElroy: And that's what I was going to ask later on, like how you determine, like, where to buy websites from and why America versus Australia. But I really want to dive in to, 1st of all, I just want to say, I feel like this business model is the dream for
people who are, pursuing financial independence [00:05:00] period, or just what people are looking for as far as Something that they don't have to retire from, right?
Matt Raad: Yeah.
Naseema McElroy: you are doing all the things that people aspire to. You have the location independence, you have the passive income, you're not tied 5 job. Like, those are all the things that I'm hearing that people want, especially right now, because there's a lot of burnout going
on. And like, I just, it's just, it sounds incredible, but I'm going to talk about,
how did you know that this was even possible for you? Like even starting out when you were buying brick and mortar businesses, how did you know to do that? Who taught you that? What role models did you have? Because, like for me. Only thing I was taught was go to a good school, get good grades, go out and work for a corporation and make sure you get a good pension and retire.
Like this thought of being able to own, buy and sell [00:06:00] businesses, not just operate a business. 'cause being an entrepreneur obviously is another path, but to buy and sell businesses wasn't something that I've. Ever like thought about doing so I'm just so intrigued on how you even discovered this as a career field
Matt Raad: That is a cool question. Cause it, that, now that you're saying that I'm sitting there thinking, yeah it is pretty unusual thing to do. Like there's people that we know people that operate businesses, but there's not that many people that buy and sell them like over and over. How did we get into that?
I think it was because. Liz and I grew up on farms in rural Australia. We have no experience in business. No one in our family were business owners, but I always had a dream ever since I was a kid. I grew up quite poor. My mum was a single mum till I was like... Six years old.
And then when she remarried, who I call dad now we moved to this farm, but he wasn't a business person either. And mom and dad, or he was just a farm manager. They weren't [00:07:00] paid very much money. So to paint the picture, what drove me as a kid. We were, mum and dad were very close to bankruptcy a few times because of like in trying to get ahead investing in real estate and things like that.
And in Australia, we had a couple of big recessions with the high interest rates. And I guess that impressed on me. I wanted financial independence. It was a huge driver where even when I was a little kid, everyone in my family noticed it. And so when I finished school, which I almost failed. I went on this journey to learn how the hell do you make lots of money?
And I realized the wealthiest people own businesses I figured, all right, how the hell do I do that? So then when I met Liz, I told her in my dreams, I'm going to be rich one day. But I don't know how to do this. So just like you're saying Naseem we're not taught this sort of stuff. No one, I was, we're the same here in Australia.
You're not taught anything. We didn't, I didn't know any business people, but I moved into the [00:08:00] city. So Australia's capital Sydney, and I started hanging around and I forced myself to, I was very shy, but I forced myself, you won't know how I did it, what my first step was. It sounds really weird. I went to a gym.
And started working out and at that gym, I met wealthy people for the first time in my life because the gym was in a wealthy part of the city. And so I started talking to like business owners and there are all sorts of people there, but that's how I started to learn and get this feeling, ah, business is the way to do it.
Naseema McElroy: I just want to say that is so important, but that was just really smart of you to do that, but I think it's even more accessible to do now and I tell people this all the time because people are always like where do I get started? I'm like, change your circle of influence and most people are like what does that mean?
It's like. Change the inputs that you're getting. If you want it to be wealthy, you need to look and be around, you need to look and aspire to wealthy people look at and aspire to wealthy [00:09:00] people and be around people who are wealthy. And so you physically put yourself in a position to be surrounded by people while wealth is a norm.
And when you do things like that becomes a norm for you too. And so I'm just so grateful that you brought that up because that's what I always tell people. Cause people just want, want like, okay, this X, Y, and Z like check these boxes kind of things to do when it's really more about like shaping your mindset.
And the best way to do that is to change their circle of influence. So thank you. Okay. Sorry for the interruption. That was so good
Matt Raad: On that note, I'm going to what you're saying is so true, Naseema, it's something we're really passionate about teaching people as well, it's all the mindset, because what I did back then as well, at the same time, I was reading all those classic books, like, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Magic of Thinking Big Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, all those sorts of things, And it started to formulate in my mind, I've got to get out there and do something different.
And it was exactly what you said. I realized I've got to [00:10:00] hang around people. And to come back to your original awesome question, because now I, you've really got me thinking, why did we pick this path of buying and selling multiple businesses? I think it came from setting this goal of getting into business and realizing that's how I'm going to get rich or financially independent is through business.
So that was. Goal number one, and then goal number two was once we got into our first business, which was a little manufacturing business, we realized we were looking for, we read Rich Dad Poor Dad. That was in the late nineties and we went, that's Nirvana. What Robert Kiyosaki talks about is businesses back then he was talking about like, laundromats and car washes, which are where you hire someone to run them so you don't have to work in them nine to five.
And also at exactly the same time as luck would have it again, going back to this networking, because we bought a manufacturing business. And we knew nothing about it. We were totally [00:11:00] self taught. We had to hang around with other manufacturers. And we realized manufacturing businesses, you don't work nine to five.
So we're talking, we had role models all of a sudden. These are older guys in, sadly not women. Like, honestly, they were older guys. There was about five or six different manufacturing businesses that we knew. That kind of, Agreed like they would help us. They'd give us tips and we'd go and learn. Admittedly, we were spending money with them as well.
So we got to know the owners really well. And we're formulating in our head, this idea of how we wanted our ideal life to look. And it meant owning, Businesses where you didn't have to work nine to five. That was our main driver and that we could still live in the country. And we did all that we were with, that's the path we went on and it just worked really like, like I make it sound easy, but in the same, it took over 10 years.
Naseema McElroy: Okay. Thank you for that
Thank you for
that. Cause people are going to
Matt Raad: listening. This was. Yeah, no, this was not a [00:12:00] walk in the park. We're manufacturing businesses are very difficult to run, especially when you're a young entrepreneur. So we were always in debt to the bank. We were skating close to insolvency the whole 10 years.
Like I'll be honest about it, but it was very rewarding as well. We did really well out of that. And what happened was because we were able to systemize the manufacturing business so well, we had time on our hands. It worked. The strategy worked. But the finances always held us up. But admittedly, wait till you hear what we did next.
Point number three was, we started buying up other businesses because we had time on our hands and we worked that business. We realized, let's buy more businesses and keep trying this and build up a portfolio. And again, around the same time, we were putting ourselves out there in around, we realized exactly what you said.
If you're listening to this, you need to listen to the number one, as exciting as what. Liz and I do, buy and sell online businesses. Nassim has actually hit the nail on the head, the real secret. It's who you [00:13:00] surround yourself with. That's why we went down this path, because at the same time we started hanging out with other guys.
These were high net worths who were really successful surprise, from buying and selling businesses. And that's who we hung around. And so we just emulated what they did.
Naseema McElroy: so two things I want to ask, first of all, so most people think, okay, like the way to be rich is to own a business. But most people think that means like being an entrepreneur, not in the business of buying and buying a business. So that you can later on sell it. Whatever you need to do to make sure that the revenue increases to later on, sell it.
So I think, that's a whole nother level. So I just wanted to clarify that. Because like I said, this whole entrepreneurship thing is really pushed on people and sometimes it's not just about that part. It's about buying a business. So that, that. It's going to be profitable because that way you can go back and sell it.
The other thing [00:14:00] I want to ask is, so how did you come up with the capital to invest in this first business that you had?
Matt Raad: Yep. Friends and family and bank.
Naseema McElroy: Yeah.
Matt Raad: And so that, that was really tough really tough financially. So we were back in those days too, with the banks, we're in a country town. So you can't do it now as easily as what I won't say it was easy, but you had a bank manager, a personal, there was always the manager in the country town.
Now he knew my dad. My dad was the president of the Lions Club, which sounds, so when I walked in and he knew my mum and dad, like my stepdad, and so basically they were, the bank was prepared to give us a loan, horrific terms though, like really high interest rates, but also friends and family. And then the, what I want people to realize is, this is another thing that, this is actually a really good question Naseema.
This is what shaped us [00:15:00] probably the most ever since those 10 years is we really disliked it. It is a real killer in like Warren Buffett, we love Warren Buffett and like he says, when things get tough, you see who's standing naked, like when the tide goes out, because debt is super tough when you're a young entrepreneur, so if you're listening to this, I would advise you don't do what we did in the early days.
It's really tough. This was before we had kids. We could take on a lot of risk. Liz and I are a very high risk level, but especially back then. So full disclosure, you need to understand what Liz and I think is A lot of people would just be like, wow, how could you take that sort of risk? We didn't care.
We had no kids. There was no ties. So we were
Naseema McElroy: had nothing to lose at that point.
Matt Raad: Yeah. Yeah. And we're happy to be close to bankruptcy. There's not a problem. Like it's highly stressful. And so what we do is every dollar we made, we reinvested back into business. And so we were literally, living on. Rice and beans type thing.
We, we had a good life. It was a lot of fun. I wouldn't change it [00:16:00] for for anything, but it was touch and go in a lots of places. And. What came out of that was our next big goal is not just location independent nine to five owning multiple businesses. The next big goal was how the hell do we do this debt free because that was killing us as young entrepreneurs.
We could just never quite get ahead. Very challenging until you did the exit on the business and then you pay everything off and, I wouldn't recommend buying and selling bricks and mortar businesses these days. They're just way too expensive. So that's when we discovered, in my opinion, pretty much Nirvana for Liz and I was online businesses.
We started out, you can buy online businesses for under 50, 000 or under even we get our beginner students buying websites. Under 2, 000 just to learn. So you can do exactly what we did with bricks and mortar businesses, but with these little tiny micro online businesses. So if you're listening to this and you want to have a go at being an entrepreneur, like you've read, say rich [00:17:00] dad, poor dad, and you want to have a crack at it, just my thing is what, why wouldn't you do it with an online business?
Cause you can, it's easy. You can, it's low risk. I'm not saying to go out there and do dumb stuff. But you've got to learn a lot. There's a lot to learn like due diligence, but you got to do that in bricks and mortar businesses anyway. So you can practice this on small websites. And so that was the next big part of our journey, which, as I said, started in 2008 and we realized online businesses, we don't have to invest in physical inventory.
That, that's we made a rule with each other. Okay, if we do this and the next phase of our life, we are not buying any more businesses where we have to reinvest into physical inventory. And because that just held us back financially for so long. And when we got online and we started buying selling online business, the good news is that did work for us very quickly.
That was stunning. It was a shock even to us at how well it worked. Because [00:18:00] obviously we had a lot of experience in business too. But if you're listening to this, I'm not giving financial advice. I'm giving a personal opinion of what happened for Liz and I, my wife and I buying and selling online businesses way, way easier than bricks and mortar businesses.
No debt for us. We just play it safe, start out small and build up. And that's literally what we do and what we teach to this day.
Naseema McElroy: And I love that no debt model because like you said, and I know a lot of people feel it in whatever kind of debt they're in personal debt, credit card debt, student loan debt. Debt is a heavy burden. Debt is one of the things that It really takes a physical and mental toll on you like nothing else.
So I understand like that feeling that you were talking about when you started
out, especially only friends and family. I'm like, listen, I cannot.
Yes. I
Matt Raad: can appreciate what we went through. How you did it with real estate, like you had that debt. We had that with [00:19:00] businesses and it's like a, it's like an energy. It's like an anger, this energetic. Anchor around your neck.
It's there every minute of the day. And it's very stressful, particularly when you've got kids and things like that. And I would imagine in this day and age with, like you said, Naseema, a lot of your community and we see it as well as a lot of burnout now, and you imagine being in debt on top of that and all the troubles out there.
It's, I think it's a, it's an energetic thing and it holds you back as an entrepreneur.
Naseema McElroy: But I think the thing that is really discouraging that I see a lot though is that people that want people to get involved in businesses often sell debt as like this leverage thing that you just have to do. And that really , in the core, in my core, it strikes a nerve because it's just,
Matt Raad: It's,
Naseema McElroy: selling people dreams.
Based off of these things that they don't even know if they can attain, but in the meantime, we're [00:20:00] putting them in such a deep hole. We don't even know if they can get out of it. So I love the model that you created for your clients, where you help them do it. Debt free, like,
from
Matt Raad: That
Naseema McElroy: This leverage, this whole thing on, over leveraging yourself is really oversold.
And I think a lot of people are, like, feeling the brunt of that right now, because it was so easy to get really low cost financing or affordable terms that a lot of people over leverage themselves and are now in a pickle because these interest rates are really bad. So this is not to shame anybody is just to tell you that there's.
other ways to make money without having to put yourself in that position to grow debt. Like you said earlier, if you would have known better, you would have done better. you've taken those lessons. You don't regret it. However, it could have ended badly. Fortunately it didn't, but yeah.
Matt Raad: And I do just want to clarify what we do now. It's not buying [00:21:00] businesses, no money down or anything like that. You still need cash. You need, so we're cash buyers of businesses, but for us, buying a website for 10, 000 or under 100, 000. Is very cheap. I know your listeners are in different financial situation.
Everyone's got different financial situations, but for us, what I'm comparing to is the debt. When you buy a bricks and mortar business, I don't care what sort of business bricks and mortar business you buy, particularly if it's a manufacturing or wholesale import, you're up for hundreds of thousands into the millions.
Whereas with websites, you don't have to do any of that. I worked as a broker as well in M and a, and I saw these clients. Really nice people, high level executives and stuff going into debts for millions of dollars buying these businesses. And I'd come home and say to Liz, they should just do what you're doing, buy and sell websites for 10, 000, 50, 000.
So we've got clients, Naseema, they buy websites. Our best story, a couple of our really cool stories, like we have Lisa, she bought this site for [00:22:00] 2, 000. She got that to making 5, 000 a month profit. And now that's gone up, it's gone even better. It's makes anywhere from like, she's had 30, 000 months. And we have Nathan and Alexa, these young couple that they're doing a laptop lifestyle thing.
One of their latest sites, they bought for just 400 bucks and it makes four grand a month now. So you can't do that with bricks and mortar businesses, that sort of stuff. Now, there's a step there. I know I make it sound easy. You've got to learn stuff. That's
Naseema McElroy: Yes.
Matt Raad: there's always a gap. There's a, there's, you've got to learn a few things.
But my point is... This debt thing it's just online business is what our experience is. And looking across our community, you don't need to, I get uncomfortable with beginners. Exactly what you said, Naseema, beginners who want to be entrepreneurs. It's not a smart thing to buy your first business in the six figure to seven figure range.
It's very dangerous. And you're going to be beholden the banks or to friends and family for money. Whereas [00:23:00] if you've got a Some, a bit of cash around, you can lightly start with websites, buying them under 5, 000, say, just to learn when you're ready to step it up, you can buy really good websites for under 50, 000.
Easy.
Naseema McElroy: Yes. It's just it's so much more attainable. Like you said, like 400, 2, 000. That's easy to do for somebody getting started versus like, oh, investing with me. We started off at 50, 000 and you're not guaranteed to make any money off of that, but you might learn something.
Matt Raad: Yeah, and the, and these assets you're in control of, the cool thing is you still get, you get to play with them. You get to rent, we call it renovate these website assets. What we're looking for is rundown websites or websites where there's an opportunity to fix them up. It's a bit like real estate, flipping real estate.
You can, but we hold them for the cashflow and literally all we do is we just tidy them up. And then we do ongoing maintenance and we try and double the cash flows. That's basically the goal each time. So you can buy. [00:24:00] So websites typically sell for, just, if you're listening and you're wondering what, how does this work?
So if you, websites sell on what's called a three times yearly profit multiple. So if the website makes 100, 000 a year, profit, not sales, actual real profit, that website probably cost you anywhere from 100, 000 to 300, 000.
But, you don't, as a beginner, you would never go out and spend six figures on your first website.
That, you gotta learn due diligence, you gotta learn things. What we teach is, you can buy a simple little site for 2, 000, and you should be able to get that up to making some money. And if it costs you 2, 000, it's probably making you, I don't know, a couple of hundred bucks a month or something like that.
But then what we do is we renovate them because and that's basically how it works.
Naseema McElroy: Okay, so the way that in just excuse me, if this is a silly [00:25:00] question, but the way that websites to me make money is either you're doing ad revenue or you're selling like a digital product.
Matt Raad: Yes. Yep.
Naseema McElroy: Okay. Is there something else I'm missing or is there something in particular that you guys look for
Matt Raad: Yes, there's another thing is affiliate offers.
Naseema McElroy: Oh
Matt Raad: yeah. So we have, I'm just thinking what's a really good example. We have Nathan and Alexa, they're a young couple that, that site that they bought. It's a site about gardening. Now they're, I need to say, they're laptop lifestylers.
They live in an apartment. They're in Thailand at the moment. They know nothing about gardening. But, it's a site that's about gardening. And basically it's got ads on there that people click on, but it also reviews things like lawnmowers and gardening tools. And when people read those reviews, they click on a link and they'll go over to Amazon, they cook it, and anything that person buys on Amazon for the next 24 hours, Nathan and Alexa get a commission.
They get [00:26:00] like 5 percent or whatever. So it means they don't have to stock the lawnmower. Or the gardening equipment, they just simply get a commission, which is for us, that's the perfect model because holding that physical inventory yourself. Having a warehouse full of lawnmowers is really expensive.
So affiliate offers work really well. That's hugely effective. And that's basically the main way that we make money online is through affiliate offers and ads. So basically the job is to get more people onto the website and provide really helpful. What we're doing is helping people. So we love going into niches that people are passionate about.
So crafting. Learning how to play guitar. So we've got a client, Greg. I was just helping him the other day. He's got a site where he teaches people how to play jazz guitar. And he's high, he's here in Australia. So you'll love this Nesima. His main content producers are in America. They're guitarists in America.
He just organizes them and they do the lessons. And that's a six figure business.[00:27:00]
Naseema McElroy: Wow.
Matt Raad: That's what he makes. He makes six figures off that. And he's here in Australia and he's got, I think he's got three writers in the year of free content producers who create content for him in America.
Naseema McElroy: content like videos or is it just
Matt Raad: It's videos and written content. And then what he's done though, talking about this portfolio shows you, so you'll love this, right? And if you're listening, it's a Greg's already got this site. I've been helping him with that. It's making six figures. He's just gone and bought another guitar site that it's been around for like 10 years.
He paid, I think it was around 20, 000 US for that. And it's a US based website and it's just an affiliate site. And all it does is review guitars, reviews, speakers and guitar equipment. And it makes consistently 1, 000 a month. And he's done nothing to it. He said when he bought it, he bought this six months ago he was talking about it [00:28:00] at one of our conferences and it's a long established website.
It's just been neglected by the owner. All Greg's done is made it look, the top head a bit. He just prettied that up and he hasn't even put any new content on and still making passively. He's done nothing to it, makes him a thousand bucks a month and it cost him 20 grand.
Naseema McElroy: That is incredible. And I love that. I mean, because if you frame it in a way that you like frame it when you're buying real estate, for
example, minus all the stuff and the tenants and all that crazy stuff that comes with like buying real estate, it just makes sense. You buy something. That may not be pretty or something that somebody just is tired of and wants to get rid of just like a house.
And then you go in, you fix a couple of things. You slap a coat of paint on there. You change up some links and some articles and now you can. Repurpose this and generate income from it. So I love the model. It makes so much sense to me. I just don't know why I just did not know it [00:29:00] was a thing.
Matt Raad: So you,
Naseema McElroy: I know people who've had websites bought, but it was just like it still was just like far fetched for me.
Like I didn't get it. It's
Matt Raad: And that's the thing, people don't realise that these opportunities are right there in front of you every single day of the week. And you think about Greg now, he didn't realise before he met us, he didn't, he'd never really thought, I'll just keep buying up more sites. So he's not just got one, now he's got two.
Naseema McElroy: Mm
Matt Raad: And you think about it, the writer's on his original site. You can just use them to write articles on the new site and keep building it. So it gets easier. It gets easier, not harder. That's the beautiful thing about owning a portfolio, and that's what Nathan and Alexa do. So they travel around, the young couple, and this is what all our clients end up doing.
You want to build the main thing you want to learn is the digital skills, how to do it. But then really the only work in the business, the main work is creating the content. Now I make that sound easy. There is work to that, [00:30:00] but you outsource that's your
Naseema McElroy: exactly. There's people that just do that. That's their full
Matt Raad: once you've got that team, you can buy other websites and you go, Hey guys, now this week I want you to work on this website and produce content for that.
So you can now build up this portfolio idea and what Liz and I learned because we've bought and sold so many businesses, portfolios with businesses are a huge wealth generator because you know how people buy portfolios of real estate. Now this is a way you can buy up light, nimble, little, you just buy a little, keep buying little sites like 5, 000, 10, 000, and you can own up this, you can be like a little mini magnate, but for no debt, just as you get successful, you put the profits into the next business and you can buy up a portfolio and then you've got the safety of a portfolio.
So if one site goes down or stops generating income, you still got another four websites that make you money. And for most of our clients, that's the goal is to get to [00:31:00] say five or six good websites. And that's six figure income and then they can quit their job. That's what we like to help people do.
That, that's pretty much the outcome for everyone.
Naseema McElroy: can you explain to me, so how do you work with people who are interested, like from the beginning to them successfully start starting to buy their first website to building their portfolio?
Matt Raad: Yeah. That's a good, great question. So that's what we do at the eBusiness Institute here. And we've been doing, we've been doing this since 2009, 2010, because people would ask us exactly like what you're asking. How do you do this? So we teach people how to do website due diligence. And how to buy and sell websites, and we also teach most importantly, those digital skills.
So we, neither Liz nor I grew up understanding computers. We're totally self taught. And so what we're passionate about is teaching beginners. Not, we don't teach advanced people. We teach beginners how to build websites basically and make money online. And the [00:32:00] way we do that is through, we have our own online course.
So people, if you're listening to this and you're interested in what we do, just do our free masterclass. We've got a 90 minute masterclass and we go through the whole strategy of how all this stuff works and what we do. And then if people are interested at the end of it. We have a course that people can pay to do.
And basically we have a lot of clients in the U S so we're not, when we're not limited geographically, the strategies, like I said, all our sites are based in the U S anyway. So our strategy works in the U S and we just teach people where you buy websites. But most importantly, there is a skill, a skills gap that you need here.
This is not, I know I make it sound really easy. There's a lot to learn. You've got to put in the work, but if you presume if you're listening to Nesima and you want to be like an entrepreneur, like seriously, you got a lot to learn anyway,
Naseema McElroy: Yeah.
Matt Raad: business and stuff. And in my opinion, I think you've hit the nail on the head in this email.
It's a really good observation where none of us have brought up [00:33:00] learning entrepreneurial stuff. And I think what I'm so excited about, what I love with what We do online. It's a really easy, low risk way to learn how to make money as an entrepreneur. So you can dip your toe in the water. You don't have to do our course either, by the way.
You can easily go and buy your first website on platforms like flipper. com. That's where we get most of our beginners to start. It's a. It's a marketplace for buying and selling websites, but if you want to get serious about it, you do need to learn how to do due diligence. Don't just blindly buy, there's a lot of good looking websites on there that make six figures, like they make thousands of dollars a month but there's no point buying those unless you know what you're doing.
So start out small. On Flippa, you can buy a website for under 2, 000. So you can learn this and that's probably your best spot to start. Although of course, start with it. Let's do our free masterclass. I should put that in as well.
Naseema McElroy: Yeah. Definitely start with the
[00:34:00] masterclass so
Matt Raad: least watch the free masterclass. So you get an idea of the overall strategy and the sorts of things we're looking at when we're doing due diligence and the sort of sites that you should be buying.
Cause you could, you don't want to accidentally buy an e commerce site as a beginner. They're complex. There, there's certain sites you don't want to touch as a beginner.
Naseema McElroy: So I know I touched on this in the beginning, but why are most of your sites based in the U. S.? Is it just because of the population?
Matt Raad: Hell yeah. And the U. S. is awesome, Nesima.
Naseema McElroy: Oh is it
Matt Raad: the U. S. has,
Naseema McElroy: I'm trying to leave i'm trying to come there. You think the u. s
Matt Raad: Ha. In all seriousness, the U. S. is awesome. Like, for us Aussies as entrepreneurs, it's always our dream is to have businesses in the U. S. A. Because the population, 300 million, we've only got 30 million here. It's just not that big.
The U. S. and in all seriousness, it is awesome for all things online because that's where online business was [00:35:00] invented. The U. S. leads the world in all online businesses without a doubt. I don't care what anyone said. I've been doing this for, like decades now. The U. S. has the best online businesses because, I was just saying to one of our coaches the other day, I don't think people here in Australia can appreciate.
Just how big the U. S. Online affiliate marketing space is. It is like talk about wealth and abundance. It is absolutely unlimited. I can find, there are affiliate offers for every single thing you could possibly think of for goldfish, for suits, for anything. And it's all from the U S that's how big affiliate marketing in the USA is just absolutely massive.
So we were lucky enough to network in the early days with a bunch of us online entrepreneurs just privately, cause we bought websites off them and they'd say to us, Oh, Matt, you should see these affiliate offers that we can get, and we don't even hear about [00:36:00] them here in Australia. So if you're in the U S you want to know a real secret tip that we learned years ago, one of our friends in the U S.
He was like us, had young kids and you know what it's like to see me when you've got young kids, you're up late at night quite often. And so he would get, he'd call it the graveyard shift. He'd say his wife would go and get sleep. And they had a, we've all been there with a baby that doesn't sleep. So he would be nursing his baby.
So anyone listening here will love this story late at night. And guess what? This is Nirvana for me and my friends. You watch late night us TV. And what he would do is. He would see the ads that come up late night and he'd go if they're advertising that product say like vitamin cream I always remember vitamin.
He said one night. He's nursing his little baby He saw this ad for vitamin cream come up was a new vitamin cream in America and he said to me Matt you should get on to this because what he does he then googles it and sees if there's an Affiliate offer and sure enough there [00:37:00] was and he made a fortune out of it.
He made seven figures
Naseema McElroy: Wow!
Matt Raad: one of his babies. He's a smart guy. He was really good at what he did. And I think it was when Kim Kardashian first started advertising and she got that, he figured it, I think she was representing it. It was one of the very first ones, it was many years ago.
Naseema McElroy: Mm hmm.
Matt Raad: or someone famous like that, she wasn't as famous back then.
But his point was, if you watch late night American TV, you look for the ads. And if they've got enough money to put someone, famous or semi famous behind it, she was semi famous back then, to advertise it, then they've, because the affiliate marketing market is so big in the US, there's probably an affiliate program for it, and plus there's all this PR around it, and there's so many ads.
As an online marketer, you can get a lot of eyeballs onto your product. Now, he had other vitamin supplements and things, but all affiliate offers, and that was his main niche that he went [00:38:00] into. But the point is, the US is the place to be. For all you mums out there, Late at night. This is where you can do all your research.
You can start looking at, see, we can't watch the late night ads. We've got to use other tools to find the good products. Because as an affiliate marketer, you want to find a really good trending products. You can make a lot of money off those. When you know what you're doing, you got to learn some stuff first.
But there you go. That's just a cute story about
Naseema McElroy: that love that story, this is also sad about the U. S. is that the reason why we have all this stuff is because we're trained to be consumers. So
Matt Raad: Yeah,
Naseema McElroy: we are trained to be consumers here. Like, that is how we're
brought up like my kid. And that's what I say, like, I try to teach my kids differently.
So like as soon as they're like able to recognize like a McDonald's sign, right? Then they're old enough to be owners. They're old enough to invest because I got to flip that mindset around because that is why, you make so much money here cause we spend so much money. We spend, but that's how we're [00:39:00] taught, and so I love this model because it again It flips out on his head and it's just like, all right, we know about consumerism. We know about capitalism in the United States. Why not capitalize for ourselves off of that instead of continuously just being consumers?
Matt Raad: Yep. Yep. And I think you're right. America is a consumer society and that's why this online stuff just works so well. I mean, that's where all the best companies in the planet are based, even founded. Google, we love Google, Amazon, same, Microsoft, all those companies, but Google and Amazon in particular, they're the leaders in this, for us as being able to make money online.
That's who we recommend you start out with because they're blue chip. And they're very consumer driven because they're in America. Yes, sadly it did. Yeah, it doesn't, yeah. All of us here in Australia, I think all of us, I think most of our clients and ourselves included would [00:40:00] 90%, 95 percent of our business, our online businesses are in the States or in the U
Naseema McElroy: Wow. That's incredible. Do you find that people? Try to stay in a particular niche. Like you were saying the guitar playing guy, Oh, so it's like all over. Cause I was like thinking like, Oh, like if you figure out a lane and you stay in that lane, do people do that? Yeah.
Matt Raad: is a good thing,
Naseema McElroy: Okay. Oh
Matt Raad: Here's an interesting thing. When we started coaching people, it's funny. We started noticing we have a lot of cause Liz, my wife she helps me coach people and we have a lot of. Attract a lot of women in high achieving women and high achieving women tend to be perfectionists.
And so what happens is they keep thinking, I have to exactly what you're asking the same. I have to be an expert. Otherwise, I'm not being congruent and all that sort of stuff. So women have that and Liz would say to them, it's about the deal and about making money. You've got to get over that. [00:41:00] It's about, is the website good?
Does it work? And she would advise people don't go into niches that you know anything about because then you're not going to be so perfectionist. So
Naseema McElroy: that.
Matt Raad: yeah, so we own websites in topics that we know nothing about. We've got a website about pigeon racing. I know
Naseema McElroy: What the hell?
Matt Raad: bought that one.
Yeah, Liz bought that one. And we've got lots of. Crafting sites, that's been a big niche for us, but admittedly, now as we're a bit older at this and we've got the benefit of looking back, say we weren't big in crafting niche, we never knew much about it, but now we know a lot about crafting and we love it, and all our writers know about it, so now we are kind of experts, so all things being equal, yes, I want to stay in that lane way, and there is that idea that yes, when you've got a level of expertise in a niche, You can do both.
See, this is the thing. Cause we're talking owning a portfolio of sites,
You could have your [00:42:00] niche of, so Greg owns his guitar sites. But he does also own a bunch of other sites as well. Not a bunch. He's got a few other sites that have nothing to do with guitars. And it's the same with, Lisa, who I mentioned, her site was an exercise site.
She's not into exercise equipment at all, but she's got other sites as well. Nathan and Alexa own, they've got a crochet site where they, and Nathan's an electrician by
Naseema McElroy: That's
Matt Raad: He knows nothing about crochet, but his team does. So it doesn't matter. You don't have to be an expert, but if you are an expert or you're passionate about say golf or whatever, then that's a no brainer to at least look at that niche and see if you can find a website to buy in that space.
Naseema McElroy: I love it. I love it. I wanted to talk about the exit, Do you teach people like how, like when's the right time to exit out of those port out of their portfolios and their positions and yeah.
What that looks like.
Matt Raad: Yeah, the exits are an exciting time because and normally what that comes down to, and if you're listening to this, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, it's goal setting. [00:43:00] It's about what is your, if there's one thing that I've learned helping, I've helped so many people do exits from small exits through to multimillion, yeah.
seven, eight figure exits is it actually comes down to your goals. You've got to start, I don't think people think that out enough. You got to start out with your life goals and your partner's goals, like the two or if you're in a partner's or family goals, what you want for your family. And then it comes back to also financial goals because exits can be huge.
Exits can be life changing. Even when you sell a website for 50 grand, if you only. I bought that for 5, 000, that's a pretty cool outcome and that's a big decision. But in this day and age, online businesses are such good assets. we like to say to people let's seriously consider whether we actually want to sell this thing because the cash flows are really
Naseema McElroy: cash flow is so good.
Matt Raad: just phenomenal. They're cash cow machines. He got to look at why am I. Exiting this thing for 50 grand or for 5 million, whatever it is, [00:44:00] typically, what you find is really interesting people like us, they will sell them to raise some cash to roll into the next business and go bigger.
And that's where this strategy works really well. If you
Naseema McElroy: Mm mm-Hmm.
Matt Raad: and on our podcast, I interviewed one of the world's top brokers. One of his clients went from. His first starter website, he bought for like 2, 000 bucks or something like that, built it up, sold it for 7, 000, rolled that money in the next deal, bought and then built the next one up, sold it for 20 grand, then he sold the next one for 200, 000, and then the broker just sold his last one for 9 million.
Naseema McElroy: Wow.
Matt Raad: He, because he got the skills and he did that in five years. Now
Naseema McElroy: Wow. That is phenomenal.
Matt Raad: But you, what the point is, people often, that's why you can buy good websites. You're thinking, why are they [00:45:00] selling this awesome website for 20 grand? What if it's that guy that's rolling it into a bigger deal?
And this is a whole industry now. People are doing this all the time. And coming back to your question. When should you exit depends on your goal. Do you want to flip it up to raise money? Cause he had no money. He started out with nothing. Or do you want to keep it for the cashflow?
You're building assets. So Liz and I view real web assets, website businesses as like real estate. So we own a bit of real estate as well, but not real estate is not our thing for generating wealth. We generate our wealth through business. And so for websites, when we've got a good website. Even if it just makes, I've got a website that I rent out to a local business for 400 bucks a week.
So that's equivalent of owning a property,
Like a physical property. And I've had that running for,
How long now? Six years, I think. And 400 bucks a week, every Monday, I paid 400 bucks a week. It's just rent. So that's like a real, that's [00:46:00] like a, that's a property. So just, it advertises her
Naseema McElroy: can, so that's a whole nother thing. So like you can own the website, but rent it to somebody so you can potentially make whatever they want to make off of it
Matt Raad: Yeah, that's what I do.
Naseema McElroy: And then but you get your fixed asset, no matter what, and then you use that money to do whatever. That is so cool. I mean, I'm just so fascinated.
If you can't tell, I'm blown away. What I remember my question though. My question was. Do people typically enter into this. Full time going gung ho, or do they usually start as a side thing and then they build up to it eventually, if they want to
Matt Raad: It's the vast majority of people that we train the side doing do it as a side hustle because it's about learning. You've got to learn first. So we definitely don't recommend people quit their jobs straight away to do this or anything like that, because there is a lot to learn here. And again, the beauty of [00:47:00] this is, yeah. Compared to bricks and mortar businesses, you don't have to quit your job. You can do this part time in the evening in your pajamas. You know that's what we tell people to do. Just put aside a couple of hours every week or every second night or on the weekend, I know people are very busy, but you can study this part time.
And while you're studying it, you can buy yourself a little website, play with it, because what people don't realize, here's a really important thing, you buy one of these websites, I'm not going to say they're totally passive, but you can just park them. So if business, if what, if life gets in the way. Now you can buy yourself a little 2, 000 website.
You can be working on it once a week for say a couple of months, and then just say you go away on holidays or, an emergency happens, you can just leave it. It doesn't die. It doesn't disappear. It just stays there. It's an asset. These are actual assets that sit there. Generating traffic every, so part time is definitely the way to go.
So treat it as a side hustle that when you're learning, that's the best way. And then when you've got proof of concept and you're comfortable [00:48:00] that it can replace your income, that's the bit where we come in, we help people. We advise people and say, look, you're making say 2, 000 a month. Now, we only got to do that a few more times and 10, 000 a month goal.
That's when you can quit your job. And so that's what we help people with as well.
Naseema McElroy: I love you, Matt, for the transparency, because like all throughout, in this world today, people are sold these dreams, like it's like an overnight success. Even my story of paying off a million dollars in debt in two and a half years sounds like really crazy to most people, right?
I can tell you, I did not think it was going to be that short of a time period, but it was just like me putting one foot in front of the other. But I love that you share like, this is not something that you take on debt to do. This is not something that you just jump out and leave your nine to five to do is not an overnight success.
These things take time. And you have to learn skills. These are things you have to [00:49:00] invest time into learning so that you can know how to do due diligence to make sure that these businesses are profitable. So thank you so much for keeping it real with the people today. And also with sharing something that, like I said, it's so attainable.
This business model is so attainable for people who are looking for other ways to generate income. I'm. Definitely intrigued, but the thing is that it's so many things are sold to us, these easy moneymakers and it's not that straightforward. And I just want like, to really appreciate the fact that you have kept it all the way real here and.
Also, you have so many testimonies of people who have done this and I, I just, I love your story. I love what you're doing for people. I did hear you throw out a podcast there that you have. Do you do podcast interviews or you have your own podcast?
Matt Raad: We have our own podcast where we interview all our clients. So it's just our students on there, [00:50:00] digitalinvestors. com.
Naseema McElroy: digital. And so is it on any major podcast
Matt Raad: Yeah. So it's on Apple and it's on YouTube. You can find it at, there's a, there's, we've got a YouTube channel with it, Digital Investors Podcast. And you can see all our students.
Basically, I just interview our students. So because we've been doing this for so long, we've got long-term success stories there. It's really cool. Hey Naima, I love your questions. So smart. I've, it's the, and I love your enthusiasm. This is awesome. I really enjoy
Naseema McElroy: Listen, I'm going to link to everything in the show notes, YouTube channel, the webinar first step, go check out the free webinar. And I just love your energy and what you brought here. Like, I, like I said, I love this platform because I get to learn so much, like I said, a lot of things are intentionally or unintentionally gate kept, or we just don't know what's possible until we actually meet people like you and hear these stories.
And now we have another outlet to hear [00:51:00] these stories on your podcast platform and webinar. So I encourage everybody to check that out. I appreciate you. So much Matt for joining me and opening my eyes. This has been so much fun. If you guys can tell I'm having a great time.
Matt Raad: ha, same! That is it. That was awesome.
Naseema McElroy: And thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I just encourage you guys, if you're looking for a new avenue to make money or just to learn about this business that you didn't even know existed. And now, check out Matt. Platform his YouTube channel, his webinar, everything. Like I said, it will be linked in the show notes and I just appreciate you so much, Matt.
Matt Raad: Ah, likewise Naseemah, thank you so much for having me on. I love your enthusiasm and awesome questions. I really enjoyed myself today. Thank you.
Naseema McElroy: Thank you.
Hey there I’m Naseema
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